


A Choir of Furies in Your Head

by Anonymous



Category: Loveless
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Despair, F/M, M/M, Multi, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Possessive Behavior, Slow Build, post Moonless battle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-11-28 20:13:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11425341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: "Forget the horror here. Leave it all down here. It's future rust, it's future dust—"In the aftermath of it all, Nisei often finds himself unable to sleep. In the darkness of the night, he remembers a time when it was all different, a time with people who understood him.And it's in those nights that Nisei misses that.He's gone, but she's still here, and Nisei tries to hold onto the memories.





	1. Lay It Down, Let Me See Your Hand

**Author's Note:**

  * For [meclea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/meclea/gifts).



> This was written as a birthday gift for meclea! Happy birthday, friendo. 
> 
> The first two chapters are recalling memories and the story eventually arrives at present times. 
> 
> There's a mix I made for this here on my Loveless blog if you'd like to listen to music that fits the story. Any feedback is appreciated!
> 
> [Tumblr post](http://lovelesswiki.tumblr.com/post/162692610035/a-choir-of-furies-in-your-head-a-loveless-fic) // [Listen to the mix](https://8tracks.com/dailydaves/a-choir-of-furies-in-your-head-are-you-afraid-of-me-now)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At night, he remembers a time before everything started spiraling downwards.

'Cause I am

The choir of furies in your head

Choir of furies in your bed

I'm the ghost in the back of your head

_—Spanish Sahara, Foals_

 

 

Often times, Nisei finds himself awake at night, in the early hours of the morning when he’s alone with his thoughts and alone in the small room that’s assigned to him.

Before this—before all of this—Nisei had had no trouble sleeping.

He can divide his life into two different parts: before Seimei and Seimei. There is no ‘after Seimei’. Everything after his arrival in his life is marked with a single name, regardless of recent events or past events. It’s fitting. His life has become Seimei. There is nothing else for him. His entire life revolves around one person, and he does everything he can to please that one person. No one else exists. Nothing else exists. At this point, Nisei doesn’t know where he ends and Seimei begins. They’re not one person. Nisei is an indistinguishable extension under Seimei, and every part of him is subject to change at a simple order uttered from the other man’s mouth.

For the longest time, Nisei had convinced himself that he didn’t have the ability to feel love, or sympathy or compassion for others. He viewed himself as simply tolerating other people, floating through life without much of a purpose, only doing what society told him he was supposed to do—doing well in school, joining clubs, getting a girlfriend—without actually _feeling_ anything. And then, Seimei came along and with him, everything else disappeared, and it’s in these moments, these late, insomnia-filled nights, that Nisei actually misses the life that he had before.

It’s times like these that Nisei is forced to realize that all those years he’d been wrong. Or, at least, partially wrong. He’d always had the capacity to feel for others and he’d had a good, privileged life. He just hadn’t realized it until someone had taken it all away from him. And now—he’s irrevocably and completely fallen in love with the person who’d taken everything from him. Maybe that was what actually kept him up at night, the realization that he missed people and the life he’d once had, and the horrible realization that Akame Nisei is at the complete will of another person, and there’s absolutely not a thing he can do about it.

That, and the memories, memories of better times and memories of when he didn’t know how far he was falling or how fast.

 

 

It was over a year ago, now.

“I do wish I could have brought Tokino along with me.”

She looked to actually be _pouting_. Cute, with her disappointed eyes and the downcast look on her face, those red lips of hers stuck out in a frown. She was thirteen, and it was one of the few expressions she made that actually fit well with her age. Her voice was the typical, light and airy and at the same time, mature, but still holding the tones of displeasure at the absence of her puppy-like Fighter.

Sat across from her, Nisei stirred his coffee, letting the café murmur between them for a moment, savoring the pouting look on her face for just a moment longer and letting the corners of his mouth twitch upwards just slightly. He took in the way her amber eyes flicked up at her, the way she checked to make sure that he was still paying attention to her, that he had heard her statement. She glanced quickly back down upon seeing him staring at her, the action just quick enough for Nisei to catch.

“This isn’t quite the place for a sickly person, _Mikado-chan_ ,” He tapped his fingers gently on the table, letting his chin rest on his other hand. He watched as she glanced around the café, as if trying to confirm that they were still in the same place. “It’s too far of a walk for people who can’t walk very far, isn’t it? It’s better to leave ill people at home, right?”

Mikado huffed in response, but didn’t argue, and Nisei let his smile grow that much wider. There was no argument to be had, really—Fujiwara Tokino was a weak man without any stamina. There were times that Nisei thought that Mikado deserved a better Fighter. He hadn’t seen them fight together personally, yet, but Seimei claimed that they were strong. A worthy match, he even said, to Nisei’s amusement. He couldn’t even begin to imagine that man being even worth the trouble.

“I’m hungry,” She told him, frowning deeply. “I’m going to get something.”

She moved to get up, by Nisei was quicker, getting up before she had the chance to, effectively stopping her from making much of a move, “Sit. I’ll get you something.”

“Seimei-san might be here soon,” She pushed.

“Well, then, I suppose you should sit down and wait for him, shouldn’t you?”

Again, he had the last word, turning and weaving his way through the murmuring couples and groups in the café, picking a familiar way through the maze of tables and chairs and trinkets unique to the café, until he made his way to the counter. It took him only a moment, going through the motions just as he did multiple times a week, taking a moment to peer at the selection of pastries in the glass display case and reading the menu before making his decision and making his way back to the small table in the corner of the café to the girl with the long pink hair. He approached her from behind and she didn’t look up, staring down at her charm-adorned phone, surely reading a text from the sickly man they’d been discussing only a few moments prior. He was able to just slightly lean over her shoulder and read the latest incoming message.

_Please be careful, Mikado._

“Oh?” She immediately jumped at the sound of Nisei’s voice, reacting quickly and jerking her phone away so that it was at an angle that he couldn’t read.

“Don’t snoop!” She scolded, and Nisei let out a small laugh at the red tinging her cheeks and the way she scolded him, as if he were a child or a sibling who’d taken a toy from her. Her voice was high pitched, those amber eyes wide in shock at him coming up behind her, her entire body bristling and her ears standing straight up. Nisei couldn’t bear to look away from her embarrassed face, but he was sure that if he looked down, he’d see her tail bristling to twice its size.

He forced his gaze away and set her food down in front of her, proceeding to take his seat again, scooting his chair so that he was closer to her. Her expression instantly changed as she looked at the food in front of her, and he didn’t miss the way her pretty red lips turned upwards at the sight of it.

“You do so much better than Seimei-san. He always buys me coffee,” Her voice had lost its harshness and she smirked up at him from behind the strawberry and peach-adorned parfait. She was so easy to read, so easy to predict, even when she fervently claimed again and again that she didn’t have emotions, that she didn’t feel things like other people. She was wrong, so wrong, and Nisei could read her like a book.

That didn’t mean she was boring, though.

“Your Fighter seems to think that you’re meeting up with dangerous people,” He returned to stirring his coffee, listening to the sound of her shallow breaths in between the distant conversations of others. Compared to her, they were just background noise, and he’d much prefer to listen to her over any of them.

“Mm,” She hummed, tossing her long hair over her shoulder. “Tokino worries about a lot. It’s endearing, although unnecessary.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Nisei took a sip of his own coffee, savoring the bitter taste of it. He could feel the puzzled look that she gave him and smiled warmly, looking her over. Pursed red lips, straight, neat pink hair pulled into high pigtails and secured with a ribbon, the collar of her dress slightly upturned and messy. It was hard not to notice everything about her, as modest and mature as she tried to come across. He was so close to her now that he’d pulled his chair closer to her. It’d be easy enough to reach out and touch her. So easy. “A gut instinct can be useful in some situations.”

“I suppose you’re right,” She gave him a small smile, a more genuine one this time. “Even if he’s completely off-base, it can be good to be overly cautious, I guess. It’s still lovely to see him so worried sometimes.”

Nisei allowed the silence to fall between them, filled by the indistinct noise of others in the café, all having their own lives, conversations, and problems. And yet, here they were, tucked away in their own small corner of the same place, in their own world, simultaneously waiting for someone and having everything and everyone they needed right here.

And then, Nisei broke the silence, having not taken his eyes off of her, “Your hair is getting quite long.”

She glanced up from her parfait, her pink bangs falling perfectly over her soft, innocent face, her virgin ears angled slightly downward in a show of comfortableness. He reached out and took a long strand that hung by her human ear between his fingers, feeling the soft hair on his skin. She hardly reacted, only turning her head curiously to the side, “Yes, my relatives have been telling me that I should get it cut soon. I’m a bit unwilling to do it, though.”

“You should let me cut it for you,” He ran his fingers through her hair, relishing in the way it flowed against him, the strands silky and soft. It was long enough that he hair now pooled on the chair where she sat, even when she had it pulled up into pigtails.

“Maybe someday,” She commented, unknowing.

“Yes, maybe someday.”

 

They were a trio, the three of them, as unlikely as their company seemed. They were an odd group, made up of Gomon Mikado, an innocent-looking young teenager, Akame Nisei, a young adult who carried himself with a certain air of lingering danger, and Aoyagi Seimei, a man who was about as mysterious as people came. They had a dynamic, something Nisei had never experienced with anyone else, and something that was not at all unwelcomed. He would hardly admit to it, even during those late nights, but he enjoyed those warm afternoons when he would meet Mikado and together, they’d walk to the café where they’d take their seat at the table in the corner pushed up against the brick wall and when together, they’d wait for Seimei’s arrival.

For a while, it felt like he’d finally filled the hole that had been empty since the beginning of his life. It wasn’t that he knew he was in love, or that the girl meant anything to him, or even that he had friends—it was that there was _something_ when before, there had been an open, never-ending void of _nothing_. And that felt good. It felt good to have _something_.

With _something_ came other things. For the first time in his life, he was feeling things, even though most of those _things_ were dull, numbed emotions that barely caused any sort of reaction. But some of those things turned into bigger things, and it was then, in those times, that Nisei would find himself with blood on his hands and a grin in his face, giving into the primal, violent want that had occupied his mind passively for years. It would take a while, though, for Nisei to begin to question whether or not he wanted it, whether or not it was simply Seimei’s orders fueling him, or whether he’d always had the ability and desire, just never the means, and Seimei was the catalyst to all that. He didn’t know, and that bothered him, because for the first time, Nisei was at war with his humanity.

The thoughts and desires had never really bothered him before, but he’d never even considered the idea of actually acting. It was beyond him, something he hadn’t thought was even possible, and the furthest he’d ever gone was bugging rooms and places to listen into people’s conversations. That was all he did, and Seimei changed all that the moment he walked into his life. Suddenly, the world filled with color, and Nisei with violent emotions, his world filled with shades of red and black, vibrant and glaring at him, and for the first time in his life, Nisei truly felt like he could do anything.

 

It was about a week after meeting her that he first saw her doing her job. When he was allowed into the execution viewing room with Seimei, he was simply introduced as an acquaintance and not as Seimei’s actual Fighter. At the time, it didn’t bother him; he’d been more interested in what he came to see. It was bizarre to him that the childlike cute, quiet girl that he’d recently met could be the executioner for an organization like Septimal Moon. He didn’t actually think it to be possible. It couldn’t be. She wasn’t the type Nisei could imagine could hurt a soul. He was going to very quickly learn that appearances meant nothing.

The room was barren and official. It was a viewing room, the walls painted stark white, the single light dimmed, furnished with a few stoic-looking chairs, the main attraction being the large window that gave viewing into a bigger room, tiled and somehow more barren than this one was, filled with nothing—nothing but a man, gagged, restrained, and blindfolded, lying dead-center in the room. The only noise filling the interrogation room was the quiet breathing of the others—a blue-haired older woman wearing a lab coat, Seimei, and the quietly crying couple who Nisei assumed were either the family of the victims or the family of the man gagged and restrained. Everything seemed very procedure, as if this was done a million times, and Nisei wasn’t sure what he was expecting—maybe a lethal injection-type execution or a simple firing squad—but it definitely wasn’t what he got.

It wasn’t long before the girl that Nisei had only recently met made her way into the tiled room, denoting her presence with the loud slam of a door as she came into view. While everything else seemed so official and procedure-like, she…did not. She was dressed not in the typical lab coat and gloves that Nisei expected, but an off-white dress that flowed out at the waist. Her hair hung in its usual pigtailed style, the pink locks of it flowing at her sides, pooling below her waist, clearly brushed and well cared-for prior to coming into the room. Most notable, though, was the sound of her thin, high heels clicking against the floor as she moved to the center of the room, and the way she carried herself, despite the childish ears atop her head and the tail flowing behind her—with confidence, with dominance, with _terror_.

Nisei tore his eyes away and glanced to his side, where Seimei stood, looking at him. Their eyes met, and Nisei found himself unable to read the slight smile on Seimei’s lips. He couldn’t decipher him—was Seimei impressed? Did he know what was coming? It was one of the first times Nisei hadn’t been able to read Seimei, something he would later rethink and come to the conclusion that Seimei had been expertly manipulating during all those times that Nisei had thought he could. He didn’t hold Seimei’s gaze for long, and quickly looked back at the scene in front of him.

There was no acknowledgement that she was about to carry out an execution, no addressing of the audience behind the window observing. It was as if she was in her own world, in that tiled, medical-looking room, as if there were no one else but her and the man she was to take out the execution on. There was no professional statement of the beginning of the execution or acknowledgement of the man’s crimes or of his successes, and no final statement talking about what he was being executed for. It simply began, and it began as her heels clicked to him and she immediately raised her foot and slammed the toes of her shoes hard into his head, causing a primal, pained scream from behind the man’s gag.

There was no more formality after that, and he watched as she savagely carried out the execution order, and he listened to every pained noise and scream the man made, his pain and horror evident in his voice. She carried on and he focused on her and that wide, cruel smile that came across her face as she continued. She didn’t seem to care about the blood on her dress, on her skin, even _in her face_. All she seemed to care about was carrying out the order in the most terrifying, painful way possible. In the middle of it, Nisei stole a glance away, and saw both the woman in the lab coat and the pair shielding their eyes, looking away from the horror as the young teenager brutally killed someone in the next room.

It was the innocence of her that got to him, that made him the most interested in what was happening in front of him, the ears on her head and the tail behind her, as well as the flowing white dress she wore and the childlike pigtails. He remembered their conversations that they’d had in the short week of knowing each other, how she seemed a bit reserved and mature for her age, but not cruel and violent. He remembered wondering, during the past week, _why her?_ Why, out of everyone, had Seimei chosen to associate with her? He thought, maybe she was an easy target. Maybe she could be easily manipulated. Maybe he was using her for something. He’d already expressed his dislike of Septimal Moon, and Nisei had thought that maybe he was manipulating her into giving him information. But as he watched her, with that wicked smile on her face and the flame in those amber eyes, he knew it was something different, and that Seimei had chosen her for an entirely different reason, a reason that was showing itself now, as Nisei watched her kill someone powerless and helpless in the most painful way possible.

By the end of it, the man was almost indistinguishable from the person he’d once been, and the previously pristine execution  room was painted with a mixture of blood, guts, and viscera. The man, though barely alive, seemed to be begging for mercy through the surely agonizing pain. He watched as Mikado raised her foot again, staring down at him with a dominance that Nisei had never seen on a person, and slammed her thin heel into his eye, causing one more dying scream before the man fell silent.

The blue-haired woman cleared her throat, her voice having a tinge of disgust on it, “Time of death is three thirty-two in the afternoon.”

Nisei looked at Seimei and caught his unreadable violet eyes again as Seimei smiled seemingly warmly at him again.

“That was—” Nisei began, and then cut himself off, not knowing quite how to describe what he’d just seen. There was something stirring inside him, something sickeningly warm and bubbling, and the image of the once innocent girl splattered with the blood and guts of a man she’d just killed stuck in his head, refusing to go away.

“Something, wasn’t it?” Seimei mused, looking back at the observation window. Nisei followed suit.

Something was shared between them that day, something between the connected Beloved pair, as Nisei replayed it over and over again, wanting to tear the innocence from that girl’s body and leave her only with the primal violence he’d just witnessed.

 

Other people started noticing before he did. And maybe, thinking back on it now, maybe those other people tried to warn him. His hindsight was perfect, but during his fall, he had no idea how far he was straying or how much he would come to miss the life that he once had in a time that now feels like it was long, long ago. He’d never associated with many people, as he felt sorely out of place and unable to connect with most people in places like his school, clubs, and cram school, but there was one person who pushed back just a bit, just enough that Nisei noticed and had stopped trying to shake him.

 

“You’ve been absent.”

He hardly took notice of the other’s voice, focusing on the screen ahead of him, searching for the inaccuracy in the code he’d written in the short time he’d been in the lab. The other hadn’t said much to him, and they hadn’t seen each other a lot in the last couple of weeks, a stark contrast to the way things were before Seimei.

But he didn’t seem to take the hint, continuing on from his place behind Nisei, “I’ve been thinking about looking for more members. You know, putting up fliers and stuff. Mei said she’d help me make them so they look nice.”

Finally, Nisei spun his chair to look back. Behind him, Mimuro sat on a desk, his chin in his hands, staring with a solemn face at what Nisei was writing and at Nisei himself. Mimuro was one of the most transparent people he knew, and he seemed to wear his emotions on his sleeve without much of a care or any shame. He was easy to read and was what most people would call good-hearted. Usually, Nisei just thought of him as annoying, though he did prove his use occasionally. That was, he told himself, why he kept the older student around and why he’d stopped trying to push him away. That, and the fact that Mimuro was interested in the things Nisei was and because of that, showed up in every class and club Nisei tried to join. He’d essentially given up on trying to get him to go away. 

He might’ve been interested in the things Nisei was, but there was no way that they thought alike. They were completely different people, with Mimuro just being the type of person to go with the flow and enjoy it. Nisei, however, thought of himself as only joining clubs and doing well in school because there was nothing else to do—prior to Seimei he’d been _bored_ and empty. There was nothing, he’d thought. And then Seimei had brought color and life into him, but sometimes, Nisei was still stuck. Like here, in this godforsaken school, stuck after school with this older student who didn’t understand him, who tried to understand him, who _couldn’t_ understand him. They were too different, and thought too differently. If Nisei showed his true colors to Mimuro, there was no way he’d ever forgive him or want to be around him again. So he was stuck, playing pretend, here with this boy who thought he’d succeeded in befriending Nisei.

“Are you asking my permission?” Nisei raised an eyebrow, not hiding his annoyance at being taken away from the task at hand. It was a project that Seimei had asked him for a couple days ago. He hadn’t given a deadline but with Seimei—he needed to please Seimei. Otherwise, Seimei would doubt his skills, and he certainly couldn’t have that. The program had followed him to school, where he’d resolved to try to finish it during the computer club meeting. He was so close and yet—Mimuro constantly wanted to interrupt him and delay the finishing of it.

“Are you going to chase them all off again?” Mimuro countered, his voice oddly serious. He clearly thought of the two of them as _friends_ rather than just simply associates or students who happened to be in the same club and on good terms. He seemed to like Nisei, and his insults and spiteful personality didn’t seem to even faze him, so he was still around.

“Depends on who you pick,” Nisei answered simply, bringing himself back to his computer screen, scrolling through the lines of code, trying, trying, trying to fine the one redundancy that was ruining it all.

Mimuro obviously wasn’t satisfied, though, and moved so that he was leaning on Nisei’s desk, and Nisei could see him just out of the corner of his eye, standing there, arms crossed, looking down at him. On the keyboard, Nisei felt his fingers twitch in irritation, wondering over and over why he couldn’t just _go away_. Mimuro spoke up soon enough, his voice just adding to Nisei’s frustration, “Is it Aoyagi who’s taking you away from school?”

At the mention of Seimei, something in Nisei snapped.  In their now-short conversations, Mimuro hardly ever brought up Seimei by name, and every time, hearing Seimei’s name from his lips caused something in Nisei that made him see red. He stood, abruptly, the chair jerking from underneath him and threatening to topple to the ground. He picked up his bag, clutching at the straps, and looked the older student in the eyes.

“Why the hell do you think that? You know just as well as I do that I hate this place and I have better things to do with my time,” Each word came out snapped and short, and he let every bit of his annoyance at Mimuro sink into the words. He turned, heading out the door, but almost instantly, there was a hand on his arm, gripping him and pulling him back. Nisei looked to see Mimuro gripping him and opened his mouth to snap at him more, but the other student spoke before he could get anything out.

Those brown eyes were so focused on him, so filled with a stupid amount of compassion, and his voice absolutely reeked of it, “I’m just worried about you.”

               “I have no need or want for your fake concern, _Senpai_ ,” He hissed as he yanked his arm away and made his way out the building.

 

“Something seems to be distracting you, Nisei.”

Seimei was waiting for him when he got home, and Nisei had long since given up on trying to figure out any sort of a schedule or when to expect Seimei and when to not. He was just there when he was and not when he wasn’t. It was one of the many things that Nisei was beginning to learn about this new life. Another thing was that Seimei could always pick up on his thoughts and feelings, as well, no matter how much Nisei tried to hide them from him. It was part of being a paired unit, he thought.

“Something happened at school,” Nisei threw his bag down onto one of the armchairs in the living room, watching as Seimei closed the book he was reading and set it onto the coffee table. Nisei waved it off, stepping away and into the kitchen, drawing cups and teabags from the cabinet.

To his surprise, Seimei trailed, standing in the doorway connecting the kitchen to the living room, looking at Nisei with eyes that were increasingly unreadable. By now, he’d mostly given up on trying to read Seimei. Mostly. Seimei waited a few moments and then spoke, his voice soft and yet, authoritative, “Oh? School seems to be… useless for you, don’t you think?

Nisei stopped, instantly, at the sound of his voice. It wasn’t his words so much as it was his tone, and it forced Nisei to stop bristling and finally, finally, after the long bus ride home and the seemingly millions of stairs that it took to climb up to his second-floor apartment, he could breathe. The first breath of air was pure bliss, coursing through his entire being, seemingly calming every strung out nerve he had. He felt himself relax and then glanced down, finding himself holding teacups and teabags. For a long moment, it confused him. He hadn’t remembered deciding to make tea or even asking himself what he wanted.  He’d simply gone through the emotions, arriving home to see Seimei and immediately moving to make him feel more comfortable. He hadn’t even thought of it. It had just been a reaction his body had to seeing the other on his couch, peacefully reading a book as if nothing was ever wrong in the world.

“Yes, that’s it,” Seimei’s voice was nearer now, and he felt the quick brush of his fingertips pushing back the long black hair that had fallen into Nisei’s face. Nisei’s head whipped up, his eyes focusing on Seimei’s face, on the hard lines of his jaw, on his lips when he spoke, and anywhere but on his actual eyes, refusing to meet his hard gaze. He could feel it boring into him without having to look up to see his eyes. Seimei continued on, and Nisei stared, wide-eyed at him, Seimei’s voice ringing in his ears as he spoke, “What could possibly be bothering you, Nisei? An insignificant test grade? An embarrassment in front of your peers? _A fight with a friend?_ ”

Nisei pulled away.

There was no way—

“—How did you…?”

Seimei stepped back, closing his eyes and smiling, Nisei having pulled out of the trace that Seimei had lulled him into through his closeness, the electricity gone, no longer buzzing on his skin with Seimei’s proximity.

“Just a gut feeling,” Seimei told him, simply, and Nisei didn’t question it.

He turned back to the task at hand, reaching for the kettle and firing the stove on, trying not to let his jitteriness show, the anger from before having faded into a need to do _something_ for Seimei. Anything was good enough. He paused, for a moment, “I had a _disagreement_ with Mimuro-senpai.”

“It’s to be expected, given his personality,” Seimei responded instantly. “Don’t put too much weight onto the conversation, Nisei. You don’t need him.”

Mistakenly, Nisei set the kettle down too hard, causing it to slam against the burner, startling even him. He drew his breath in sharply, his body stiffening again at Seimei’s words, “I don’t need anyone. I do perfectly fine on my own.”

This time, there was a pause on the other end, but it didn’t last long, as Seimei’s voice continued to fill the entire room and echo through Nisei’s head after a simple moment of silence, “That’s untrue. You need _someone_ , Nisei. Don’t be so self-centered.”

“No,” Nisei’s hands shook as he opened the package of tea, but he kept his voice as steady as he possibly could. “I don’t need anyone. My parents let me live on my own and I’m doing perfectly fine without anyone.”

“I think we’re talking about two different things,” Another pause, heavy in the air, and then: “You know, I think you should read the book I brought here, Nisei. It’s about a girl who was completely destroyed, and no one saved her. I think you’d like it.”

“I don’t read,” Finally, Nisei turned to face Seimei again.

“You don’t?” A cocked eyebrow, a judgmental tone, and a feeling that crashed over Nisei in waves, a feeling he was unfamiliar with that made him feel hot and as if his skin was crawling.

“I guess I do.”

 

No one understood him, he thought for the longest time. It was the source of most of his disagreements in his life, especially prior to Seimei, and it was definitely what initially drove a stake between he and his only friend at school. No one understood him, and no one could. He’d resolved to go his entire life doing what society deemed was acceptable and never straying, never daring to give himself away to everyone. He was set to keep his true self hidden for his entire life, never going off the path because it meant certain failure in life. Before Seimei, there was nothing and no one could understand that there was nothing. And no one could understand his thoughts or the images that flashed through his mind or why he acted the way he did.

But then, like everything else, Seimei came along and changed that and suddenly, even though they were few, there were people who understood him, people he thought were like him, people who were _different_.

 

It was pouring rain.

It was also supposedly a schoolday, but Nisei hadn’t been back to the school in… it had to be over a week now. At this point, he’d partially forgotten that he used to attend school every day, resolving his days to Seimei and Seimei’s wishes and orders, only stopping to make time for things related to Seimei but not quite Seimei. Things like this. Things that had Nisei going out in the pouring, blinding rain in search of a bus stop that he’d only been given the intersection of, rather than an address.

He was in the upscale part of town, a neighborhood with large houses atop acres and acres of land, with ornate gates on the driveways that prevented outsiders from coming onto their property. The street was barren, almost, and there was no life to be found. Even if there was, there was no way Nisei could see it, since visibility was down to almost zero, and all he could see was grey everywhere between the downpour. It was a strain to even see the road or sidewalk in front of him. His phone navigation had brought him here, to this intersection, with the street names that he’d been given. It was just a few steps, according to the map on his phone—

Oh, there it was.

The bus stop was a typical one, dingy and rundown, even in this part of town, partially glass and donning an electronic screen that told him that all buses were indefinitely delayed. And underneath the small, leaking roof of the stop was exactly what he was looking for.

He stepped under the overhang, closing his umbrella and shaking it off in the small dryness of the stop before turning his gaze onto what he’d been sent here for in the first place. He narrowed his eyes, “So, do you want to tell me exactly why you wanted me to come get you in this downpour?”

“It’s nothing you have to worry about.”

The redness on her cheek and the beginnings of a bruise told a different story, as did the backpack stuffed and bulging with what he could only imagine were prized possessions and files.

“Alright; let’s go,” He opened his umbrella and she hopped to her feet, uncharacteristically wearing a pair of tennis shoes, though she still had on her usual dress. No coat, though, he noted, let alone an umbrella. He’d sort of expected such, and gave her the smaller compact umbrella that he’d brought with him. She accepted it without a word, and her face remained almost completely expressionless. She slung the backpack over her shoulders, opened her umbrella and joined him at his side.

“Where?” She asked, without expression in her voice.

“Café? You look like you could use some food.”

“And after that?”

“Wherever. Seimei’s house, mine, your Fighter’s—it doesn’t matter.”

She nodded, and started off down the street at his side, her voice filling the air over the loud noise of the raindrops hitting the ground, “There should be a working bus stop up ahead.”

 

She was right; there was one. It came soon after they arrived and they boarded it, Nisei handing the bus driver enough money for the two of them. The city bus was nearly empty, with everyone either being at work, school, or generally hiding inside from the insipid downpour. Mikado took a seat facing the aisle, putting her backpack on the seat beside her, and Nisei stood, holding onto one of the handles on one of the upper bars. He alternated looking from the display, watching for their stop, to looking out the front window, taking in their surroundings. They were both quiet for most of the journey, until she finally spoke up, her voice never changing from that emotionless tone.

“You didn’t call Tokino, did you?”

Nisei glanced down at her to see her staring at him curiously, a slight frown on her face. Still fairly emotionless, even as her cheek swelled and the bruising darkened the skin there.

“I have no reason to call him,” Nisei frowned, thinking about the other Fighter with a certain disdain. So weak. He shook his head, and rolled his eyes, “We don’t tend to get along, anyways. You know that.”

There was a small laugh, Mikado’s usual reaction to Nisei and Tokino’s slight head butting. She leaned back in her seat, resting her uninjured cheek on her hand, “He worries too much. It’s bothersome.”

“I thought you said it was endearing and lovely, if I remember correctly.”

“I changed my mind.”

“I suppose that’s fair,” That idiot did seem to worry a lot. The only expressions Nisei had ever seen him make were angry ones, directed at him, and worried ones, directed at Mikado. He truly seemed to treat her like a child.

“Yes, this would bother him far too much. I’m not up to dealing with that right now. Does Sei-san know?”

“Not that I know of,” He answered truthfully. He didn’t really contact Seimei—Seimei contacted _him_. “But you know him.”

“I do,” She seemed to think for a moment, her amber eyes flickering upwards. “Nisei, our stop is soon.”

Nisei didn’t move, but raised an eyebrow at her speech, “Just ‘Nisei’ now?”

She looked taken aback for an instant before recovering to her normal state. So easy to read, like a book, and yet, she continued to draw him in with the way she spoke and acted, and the violence hiding underneath her skin and air of maturity. He wondered, for a moment, if she would understand, if maybe—maybe that was why Seimei kept her around.

“Hmm,” She hummed, pressing a finger to her red lips in thought. “I guess it is.”

“I don’t get a special nickname like Seimei gets? Am I not that special?”

The bus pulled to a halt, jolting the entire carriage, and Mikado rose to her feet, shrugging her backpack back on, brushing past him, stopping to look back before he could follow, “Truthfully, there’s no good way to make a nickname out of your name, so ‘Nisei’ will have to do.”

She jumped out of the bus, jumping straight into a rain puddle and stifling a laugh when she soaked Nisei. He promptly jumped after her, soaking her in the same way.

 

“No coffee! Impressive,” She grinned as he set down the parfait in front of her and took his seat across from her. The café was fuller than he expected it to be, but it still held less people than it usually did during their meetings.

It was to be expected, given that it was midday and pouring rain outside. It was full of color, despite the overwhelming grey outside, the lights yellow and beaming down at them and the rest of the café. The brick wall next to them was a welcome feeling, and plants hung from the ceiling, bright green in stark contrast with the downpour. Mikado’s back was to the window, leaving Nisei with his usual view of her and the storefront window. Many of the other chairs, tables, and few sofas were empty, with a few people loitering to get out of the rain and others talking to each other. Mikado had pulled out a stack of papers and was in the middle of running a highlighter over a few large paragraphs. When Nisei leaned over, he could see that the paper was full or legal jargon that went far, far over his head.

He drummed his fingers lightly on the table, watching as she immersed herself in the papers in front of her, biting her bottom lip and tucking an escaped strand of long pink hair behind her ear. He watched her, for what felt like hours, never doing anything of his own or checking his phone for any texts or messages and never letting his eyes stray. She was doing her work, studying files of the accused, he assumed, and making judgements based on the information. Some of them would be the judgements to execute, he knew, and in those cases, she’d be the one to fulfill the order, to torture her victims until their head caved in from her ruthless beating and they took their last pathetic breath.

He was struck again, by the duality of those two images. It was this girl here, with bruising from violence forming on her cheek, with her soft face, amber eyes, and red lips, with her smooth pink hair always pulled into those long pigtails, with her button-like nose and full cheeks—it was this girl who he’d watched violently kill multiple people, always with that bright, flashing look overtaking her amber eyes and that wide, wicked grin on her face. It was this girl who was treating her paperwork and job with the utmost care and professionalism who clearly got some sort of chilling enjoyment out of torturing and taking the life of those she condemned. The images conflicted and yet… they also somehow fit together like the last pieces of a puzzle, fitting together with the emotionless look she was usually seen with and the attempted controlledness of her other emotions and the mildness of everything she took part in—all accumulating into that explosion of violence and cruelty. He’d misjudged her before. She was capable of so much more, and he wondered—

“Mikado,” Her name rolled easily off of his tongue, even without the honorific attached to it. She looked up, and they met eyes as she put down the highlighter she was using on the document. By now, the parfait in front of her was nearly half-gone, and she had a bit of cream on her upper lip, just below her button-nose. “You’re an interesting girl.”

She raised an eyebrow at him, narrowing her eyes in a controlled, playful way, “I can’t tell if you’re trying to compliment me in your own strange way or start some sort of conversation in an equally strange way.”

She was an open book, but the interesting part, he realized, was the fact that she wasn’t hiding anything. He could see how she might come across as hard to read to some, though. She was very reserved most of the time, as if she had few emotions other than boredom and a general amusement towards things she found enjoyable or humorous, and even then, those emotions were mild. She wasn’t _hiding_ emotions. No, that wasn’t the case at all.

“Both, maybe?” He paused for a second, trying to figure out the way to ask her, to see if he was right, to see if finally, finally— “We’re sort of an unlikely trio, aren’t we? You, me, and Seimei. We don’t look like we belong together.”

“Appearances are deceiving, Nisei,” She commented.

“As is yours.”

She turned her head to the side in curiosity, “Is it?”

He nodded, his lips pulling upwards in a smile, “People don’t expect to see someone who looks like a little girl carrying out cruel executions.”

She returned his smile, not shying away from the topic in the least, “You’re right. Looks are deceiving. My executions are when I allow myself to lose control. I’ve never had the best control over my emotions—or maybe I don’t have emotions at all? We’re alike, Seimei-san and I. That’s why we gravitate towards each other, and that’s why we gravitate together, as well.”

“You don’t think I have emotions?” He acted wounded but there was something that lit inside of him, something that had been dark and empty for all these years. He itched to do things, conflicting things, to shove her to the ground and make her fight, to make her lose control again, all so he could see that primality in someone else, all so he could hurt someone who’d felt the same lingering, black hole of emptiness that he’d felt all his life.

“I think you’re like me, Nisei,” She told him, her small smile widening. “Like us. You’re not sure. You’re never sure, are you?”

“Do you love him?” His response was quick, and it was simultaneously an answer to her question and one of his own. “Seimei. Do you love him?”

She tapped her long, painted nails on the surface of the table, the clicking of her nails drowning out the rest of the café, and it was the only thing Nisei heard until she dared to speak again, “I don’t know. Do I love anyone? Have I ever loved anyone? I don’t know. Maybe I’ll never know. The best thing I and any one of us can do is come here, and that’s why we all keep coming back over and over again. None of us know. None of us may ever know.”

And then finally, finally, he had his answer. And all he wanted to do after he heard it was hurt her over and over until she fought and bit and that horrifying loss of control came over her again, and at the same time, all he wanted to do was spend more time with her, with Seimei, and have nothing change, ever.

He leaned over, into her personal space, and swiped his thumb over her top lip, narrowing his eyes and smiling at the small breath of air she took in as he did so, “A bit of cream.”

 

Nisei knows now. He knows they were wrong about Seimei. And he knows that they were wrong about themselves. There was some truth to what they said that day in the café, as the rain pounded against the roof of the shop and more patrons ducked in to escape the downpour. But they were the most wrong about Seimei. Seimei wasn’t like either of them. Seimei wasn’t like anyone. Seimei wasn’t human. Seimei was something completely separate, equal parts unique and so completely wicked that he just wasn’t on the scale that everyone else was on. Both of them had seen something that they thought they’d connected to in Seimei and that turned out to be false for the both of them, to the point where by the time that he betrayed both of them separately it had been too late for them to realize it or do anything about it or even stop it from happening. Seimei was something else entirely, something inhuman and something that should’ve never been brought into this world.

They were wrong about themselves, too, but in a different way and to a lesser degree. They could both feel emotions and truthfully, they both felt things for other people. But neither of them knew about the former until something happened that broke them and the emotions became violent and intense, and neither of them knew about the latter until they’d already lost what they once had.  In both of them, their burning hatred and anger gave way to stronger, more intense emotions and the hole that once was felt both empty and too full, all at once, creating a hole of dread in the both of them, until it came to a halting, horrid stop.

But, even now, he thinks they’re alike, the two of them. He wasn’t wrong about that, he muses as he lies on the cot, staring at the small amount of moonlight filtering in from the bars on the small window above his bed. They were always alike, and maybe that was why the things that happened did, or maybe not. He still doesn’t know, and maybe he’ll never know. Maybe it’ll continue to keep him up late at night. Maybe one day he’ll settle for not knowing. Maybe one day he’ll decide. He doesn’t know, and part of him doesn’t _want_ to know where he ends and Seimei begins, because it’s a catch-22. Either he’s a monster or he’s an obedient rat without a mind of his own, and he’s not sure which possibility is worse. The one thing he knows is that there’s no middle ground, and there never has been.

 

In theory, watching two people sit for hours playing a board game in which a move only gets made once every few moments sounds excruciatingly boring, but there was something about watching these two people in particular play the game in this particular way. He sat off to the side, on the floor, watching as they each contemplated their moves and chided and teased each other between moves. Nisei had never actually understood the way chess worked, but there was something about these two that drew him in enough that he was actually focusing on the game and the people playing it without actually playing it himself.

“Sei-san, you can’t touch a piece and not move it!”

“We’re playing by those rules?” Seimei looked up at Mikado, his hand hovering over one of his black pieces as he sat in one of the chairs in Nisei’s living room. “Because a move ago, I watched you touch your knight and didn’t say a thing about it. Don’t you think you  could extend the same courtesy to me?”

Across from him, Mikado huffed, pouting and frowning. It hadn’t been long since the rainy day, and her cheek was still puffed up slightly and bruised. It was odd, having her in his apartment for more than a few hours, but he’d offered to allow her to stay without fine print, the unspoken understanding being that she would go when the physical evidence had cleared up and she could go to her weak Fighter without too many questions. It was odd having her here, but absolutely not entirely unwelcomed. Her company also meant Seimei’s company, and the last few days had been filled with the comfortableness of the two of them here, without even talk of the plans they were constructing. It was like being with friends.

“Only if you ask me nicely,” Mikado chided, drawing Nisei’s attention back to her. He knew Seimei and he also knew that there was a difference between the way Seimei treated him and the way he treated Mikado, and he knew that a remark like that easily would’ve earned him some sort of scolding that would fill Nisei with that same hot, skin-crawling feelings he’d felt after speaking to him about his fight with Mimuro. But with _her_ —

“Mikado-chan, would you _kindly_ allow me to bypass our usual touch-rule?”

She smirked, “Permission granted, Sei-san. You may proceed.”

And strangely, Nisei didn’t feel a twinge of jealousy, as he would’ve with anyone else.

“Wonderful, thank you,” Seimei picked up a piece shaped like a horse and promptly moved it to a space with one of Mikado’s larger white pieces, taking her piece off the board, causing her grin to fall right off her face.

“Sei-san!”

“It was a fair move, wasn’t it?”

“My queen!”

“Well,” Seimei raised his hand in what looked to be a show of innocence, closing his eyes and smiling. “Perhaps if she’d been better protected or if the girl playing her would’ve noticed the moves her opponent was making towards her, this could’ve been avoided.”

Nisei narrowed his eyes at the chessboard and then glanced up at Seimei, “Is the game over?”

“Not yet, Nisei,” Seimei told him, meeting his eyes. He pointed at one of the pieces on the board, a larger piece of his own with a cross on it. “The game won’t be over until one of our kings fall. However… Some consider the queen to be the most important piece on the board. She can move everywhere and do anything and it’s her job to take out the opponent’s pieces. The caveat is that everyone else is after the queen, since taking her down can mean certain defeat in some cases.”

               “So unfair,” Mikado hissed under her breath, and then spoke up a bit louder. “You had no idea what I had planned for her! Damn, I could’ve protected her with my knight.”

“If only you’d seen it coming,” Seimei taunted, his voice light and airy. To Nisei’s surprise, Seimei turned back to him, pointing at the large piece again. “The king, however, can’t do anything at all. He can move in any direction, but not much, and has to be protected by other pieces and have the other pieces carry out his work for him, because he simply can’t. Mikado’s favorite piece is the knight—”

“My knights are valiant fighters,” She interrupted as she studied the board closely.

“Yes, Mikado is quite skilled with her knight. Not enough, though, apparently, to protect herself, though,” Seimei laughed, and Nisei raised an eyebrow at the sound of it. It wasn’t something he heard often. “I use my knights, but not at all extensively. If you use them often, you begin to overestimate the damage of what they can do. The king may not be able to do anything physically, but he can strategize and plan, and a good king knows that only using his _valiant_ knights could be disastrous. He knows that it’s better to keep them at a distance. They’ll do whatever he says—or maybe the knights are acting on their own. Who’s to say. Isn’t that interesting, Mikado?”

In response, Mikado picked up one of the white horse pieces and moved it, proudly exclaiming, “Check, Sei-san!”

 

 


	2. Do You Feel That I Can See Your Soul?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nobody can really stop a storm when it starts. They can only try to prevent it beforehand.

For a while, he was happy. He’s well aware now, looking back on it, that he was constantly being manipulated, but there’s a way to be happy, even when a person is being mistreated at the same time. He was pretty content with the life he had, with the meetings in the café, even with his thoughts and impulses. He did what Mikado did, storing up all his pent-up aggression until he was given permission to let it out, and then letting go when he was given the order, verbal or just through a look on Seimei’s face. He was always more than willing to get his hands dirty, to feel the life escape from someone under his fingertips, and he performed with such enthusiasm that even Seimei seemed impressed.

Things changed, though. They always did. Seimei had plans, and a lot of them. So many plans that Nisei occasionally got lost in the details of it all. Seimei had plans and they conflicted hard with the council, to the point where Seimei was actively plotting against the council. At some point, it dawned on him that Seimei was plotting to actually overthrow a council that, to Nisei’s understanding, governed the world they were a part of, and with it came the realization that things weren’t going to stay the same forever, that things were actually coming to an end  _fast_.

“Mikado, are you sure you can do this?”

The voice almost made Nisei groan aloud, and he let his body fill the disappointment and slight disgust that came with it. He waited in the doorway of their lodging, his arms crossed as he leaned against the frame of the bedroom. Mikado stood beside him, still being ever-patient with the irritating man, despite his insistent questioning and  _annoyingly_  constant worried. It was as if he lived in a world full of exhaustion and never-ending concern that could never be sated by any amount of sleep or reassurance.

“Don’t worry, Tokino,” Her voice was cheery as ever, light and childlike, and Nisei wanted to look down to see how she was  _actually_  feeling, but instead kept his eyes focused on the object of his annoyance.

Fujiwara Tokino was struggling to even stand in the hotel room, supporting himself by gripping hard onto the wood desk across from the bed. The trip up here and listening to the plan and carrying bags had tired him out, it seemed, again proving to Nisei that he was nothing more than a useless, worthless parasite. Nisei continued to stay silent, but could feel himself edging closer and closer to a point of no return, a point where he simply couldn’t deal with this man and his attitude anymore and he snapped.

“I should come with you,” Still full of concern. It was fucking sickening.

“You’re staying right where you are, you stupid narcoleptic,” The words slipped out of his mouth without him meaning them to, and the room fell deafeningly silent. He continued to glare at Tokino, feeling the silence drop for a moment before deciding fuck it, and carrying on, saying exactly what he’d been thinking for the last half-hour of having to listen to this man while he could barely stand up, “You won’t be of any use during this mission. You’re a liability and if you think she can’t do the job she’s assigned to do, then you’ve got bigger problems than your—what is it? Cancer? Or are you just too weak to stay up more than—Ow!”

There was the hard jab of Mikado elbowing him in the ribs, hard enough for Nisei to stop talking . He shut himself up instantly, instead resolving to simply glaring at the man across from him, who was now obviously seething with anger.

“What did you just—”

“What are you going to do about it?” Instead, Nisei smiled, the red he had seen before hazing over his vision, blinding him and making him focus only on his anger and annoyance over this man’s inadequacy and misguided concern, concern that seemed to imply that Nisei simply wasn’t  _good enough_.  It was ironic, given that this man could hardly even stand, clutching onto the desk so hard that his knuckles were turning white, shaking a bit with his own rage. Nisei grinned at him, crossing his arms over his chest again. “Are you going to come over and take it out on me?  _Can you_?”

“I—,” Across from him, the man lurched forward, stumbling over his own feet, tripping on himself and promptly falling to the ground, breathing hard as he crouched on the ground, grasping his chest and looking up at Nisei.

“Tokino—” Mikado breathed, but said nothing else.

“You dirty piece of shit,” The other man hissed, half under his voice, his tone weak and even shaking a bit from the effort and exertion. His volume raised with every following word, until he was all-but yelling at Nisei in the small hotel bedroom, his voice strained, “I’m tired of you! I’ve been sick of you since the day I met you! Mikado, we’re going home!”

“—Just what is going on here?”

Both Mikado and Nisei turned, and Nisei’s eyes grew wide at the immediate realization of what had just been overheard. In the living room, Seimei stood, focusing on Nisei with his hard, stern stare, clearly expecting an answer from him and him alone, and Nisei opened his mouth, but no words came out. He was rendered speechless under Seimei’s trying gaze, his eyes boring into him and his entire body burning and suffocating under his judgement. Nisei’s body was stiff and he couldn’t move, even if he wanted to, frozen to his place in the doorway of the bedroom.

Finally, after what seemed like  _years_ , Seimei sighed at him, narrowing his eyes and beckoning him with his finger, a single word coming from his mouth, stern and his voice being the only thing Nisei could hear, “Come.”

He didn’t want to go.

It was like he was a child again, a toddler being chastised for wrongdoing, for picking a fight with a peer. He wanted to run out the door of their suite or simply tell Seimei ‘no’. After all, they were the same age. Seimei wasn’t his teacher, or his tutor, or his parent, or an officer of the law. Theoretically, he had no real authority. Theoretically, he had nothing he could hold over Nisei’s head and theoretically, nothing was stopping him from telling Seimei ‘no’. Nothing was supposed to be stopping him from treating Seimei like everyone else who’d tried to exercise unwanted and unwarranted authority over him. Nothing was stopping him from putting Seimei down, from threatening him, from making it clear that Seimei was not above him.

And yet, Nisei couldn’t even imagine doing any of those things to Seimei. He couldn’t remember the words he’d used on people in the past or the threats that had made people back down. He couldn’t even comprehend that there was a way  _not_  to obey Seimei.

He didn’t want to.

His feet moved to their own accord, and Nisei found himself following Seimei, without looking back, barely even hearing Mikado  _tsk_  at Tokino and begin to lightly scold him. Soon enough, they disappeared from his world and there was only Seimei, leading him away and into the second bedroom, where he closed the door behind him. To Nisei, there was nothing in the room, with the exception of the large picture window that allowed the multitude of pinks and reds and oranges from the sunset to flow in and play out on the floor where Nisei stood, facing Seimei, his head barely bowed and a curtain of black hair falling over his face and shoulders.

“Kneel.”

There was no questioning, no moment of hesitation, and not even a single thought that went through Nisei’s head. His knees buckled and hit the floor and Nisei was almost instantly kneeling upwards, his eyes locked on Seimei’s face as the orange and pink light from the window played out on his skin, casting long shadows in the room behind him. His mouth was slightly open, but he didn’t speak, and Seimei never took his eyes off of him, even as he pulled a single glove onto his hand.

The room was silent. Completely and utterly silent. It was as if it existed in a vacuum, as if Seimei had somehow wiped every other living thing from the world and it was only the two of them left in the silence of it all. There was only Seimei, and the noise he made, his calm breathing, the rustle of him pulling his fingers into the leather glove and the breath Nisei took when Seimei stopped moving and focused his full attention on Nisei.

And then, there was only Seimei’s voice.

“You know better than to provoke those who I consider allies.”

That is, Seimei’s voice, and the resounding, echoing noise of his gloved palm striking Nisei hard.

It was the first time, but it certainly wouldn’t be the last.

Nisei stared up at the ceiling, holding his nose, not even watching Seimei as he walked away, not turning away when he heard the slam of the suite’s door. He didn’t look away, didn’t even think anything, not as the world came back to him, as noise started to surround him, swirling around him and the world slowly coming back into focus. Footsteps approached and Nisei didn’t turn, didn’t think, simply letting the sound come to him, everything else gone from his body, every feeling far, far away from him. He was absolutely, completely numb, and even as the door unlatched and the noise of someone coming in sounded, he didn’t move or feel a single thing.

“You know, if you bleed on the carpet, they’re going to charge us even more.”

The light, feminine voice was what broke him out of his trance. He lowered his head, slowly, time moving a mile a minute, and looked towards the door, where Mikado stood, a hand on the doorknob, her expression no different from the one she typically wore and somehow, that brought him back into his body a little more.

“It’s too late for that,” To his distant, numbed surprise, he sounded completely normal, his own voice void of any emotion. There was a wetness on his face, he’d realized, the telltale signs of blood dripping down his face from where Seimei had struck. “It’s fine.”

She sighed, “You’re a mess.”

She approached him and before he could do anything, she was wiping at the area between his nose and mouth with the sleeve of her dress. He coughed, and she pushed hard on his forehead, forcing his head back.

“Stay like that. It’ll stop the bleeding.”

He did, staying silent for a long moment before easing words out, “I think Seimei expects me to apologize.”

              She stood above him, amber eyes fixed on him, and tossed one of her pigtails over her shoulder, “You won’t. We both know that.”

“I’m not one to apologize, especially when I don’t regret it,” A smile tugged, almost menacingly at his lips, despite his current state and what had just happened. “I don’t regret the things that I do.”

Her response was immediate, “I don’t expect you to ever do so.”

And then, there was the breaking point. One of them, at least.

One might expect that it was grand and planned out, that Seimei and him had plotted diabolically, like stereotypical villains, that there had been a huge buildup—maybe a fight, an argument, or at least an indication that things were about to change for good. There wasn’t. The point when things changed was the point that Nisei held her tiny wrists in his grasp, the moment when she squirmed and bit and spat, the moment when Nisei gave in and did exactly what he’d imagined doing for months now, and held the girl down and fucked her until she cried the first tears that Nisei had ever seen come from her eyes. It was the moment that he broke her, the moment he’d been dreaming of for months, the moment that he’d both desired with his entire being and the moment in which he’d never wanted to actually happen, and  _god,_  it was the most satisfying thing he’d ever felt and would ever feel.

And yet, it was the thing that caused a rift in himself, something that would stay with him his entire life, something that stays with him now.

He thinks about it often, and it occupies his thoughts every hour that he lays on his cot, alone and forcibly isolated. He wonders what it was, whether it was his doing, or Seimei’s. He wonders if Seimei was simply the person who gave him the ability, the person who led him down a path that showed him that he could make those fantasies and thoughts in his head a reality. He wonders if maybe it was just a matter of time, and maybe he was always destined to go down this path. Maybe it was just a course of events. He wonders if he could’ve resisted back then, and what things would be like had he not done it. Maybe some other outcome had been possible. He wonders about that a lot.

He knows that there was no other outcome, because Seimei would’ve betrayed and destroyed her regardless to further his goals. Something like this would’ve always happened regardless, and maybe it was because it was him that was Seimei’s Fighter, or maybe it was because that had been part of Seimei’s manipulation. He knows that Seimei was always in control of the outcome, but that doesn’t stop him from constantly wondering if things could’ve been different.

If he could go back, he probably wouldn’t change things, though.

He still doesn’t regret it.

But maybe it’s the closest thing he’s ever come to regret.

It wasn’t even an order.

Not in words, at least.

They met on a hill at night. She was alone, without that weak Fighter of hers, still wearing the school uniform from the prestigious academy she went to part-time when she wasn’t attending to council things. There was no discussion of it beforehand, but when Nisei got the call to meet him, he knew something was going to happen that night. He had no idea what, but it was something, a feeling he got from their bond, the feeling that anyone else might label as dread. He went, though, and it was there on that hill, as she greeted them, that Nisei felt the electricity in the air, bouncing off his skin and pressing against every nerve in his body. And it was there on that hill as the twilight settled in around the three of them, that Seimei looked at Nisei with cold, calculating eyes, nodded, and uttered a single word.

“Nisei.”

It was there on that hill that the bond between the three of them was broken and it was there that Nisei stopped knowing the place where he ended and Seimei began.

He’d gone home, afterwards, alone, and had collapsed onto his bed, thoughtless and feeling nothing but violent and intense  _joy_ , and it was absolutely like nothing he’d ever felt before. It was addicting. Wholly and completely addicting. He’d wondered if this was what other people felt all the time, if this is what they’d been feeling while he’d lived his life in a dark hole of emptiness and hatred of everything around him. His heart had beat hard that night and he slept fitfully, constantly going back and remembering over and over again, hoping for the first time in his life that this feeling wouldn’t fade, that it wouldn’t go away, that he could stay like this forever.

He lived on that high for a few days, and then came crashing down.

The first thing he noticed was himself going back to the café, almost expecting someone else to be at that corner table. There never was, though, and Seimei never accompanied him to that café again. Any casualness between he and Seimei was gone after that. There were no friendly conversations between them, no personal meetings for the sake of seeing each other. If they met, it was to discuss business. If Seimei contacted him, it was almost never just to speak with him. It was because he wanted something. And he always wanted something.

At that point, Nisei was far enough gone that he’d drop everything and grovel to please Seimei, and he’d do anything to get that electrifying feeling, that satisfaction again, anything at all, and he’d do anything to avoid that sinking, hot, suffocating feeling when he’d displeased him. Seimei had conditioned and trained him into subservice, until Nisei was so completely involved that his world  _became_  Seimei and Seimei only. There was no more Nisei. Only an extension of Seimei, existing only to please him, only to be praised or, at the very least, not punished. Like a dog. Or a rat.

The next breaking point was the moment that he met Agatsuma Soubi. He’d heard about the man before, but it’d never truly dawned on him until then that Soubi was something that existed, and not only a part of Seimei’s memories and not only a subject that Seimei sometimes brought up. He’d viewed Agatsuma as something intangible, something that existed once but had ceased when Seimei had abandoned him. In the moment, though, when Agatsuma tracked him down despite Nisei masking his presence and showed up at the abandoned house that he’d been conducting surveillance—that was when he’d realized that Agatsuma was real and he was  _here._ And with that came jealousy, burning and fueling every action of his directly afterwards. Seimei had  _chosen_  Soubi, had molded him into exactly what he wanted, had  _wanted_  him. Nisei was only destined to be his and Seimei was stuck with him, not by his own choice but by the strings of destiny. It was there that he decided that he’d become better than Agatsuma Soubi ever was, that he’d destroy the other Fighter from the inside out. He had no idea that he was in love with Seimei, then, and had viewed his desires as coming from a place of narcissism, a want to become better than everything and everyone, a thought that didn’t bother him at all.

It didn’t work out like that, though, because Nisei lost the battle at the school, had fallen to Agatsuma Soubi, and had compromised the plans laid out. Things were never quite the same after that.

He knows now that it was inevitable.

_ “I don’t think we should see each other anymore _ . _”_

It was the first time he’d attended school in a month, at least. The official story was that he was dealing with family matters, and as long as he passed his exams, the school was bribed to not care. And he always passed his exams, even though he surely actually bombed more than half of them. Nisei had uttered those words without looking at the older student more than a month ago, without affliction in his voice, staring slightly down and passed him, at the wall behind him. They’d parted ways after that, and Nisei had walked away from him, passing by him in an empty hallway, never looking back at him. It was the way things had to be and the way things had ended up.

Mimuro was here, though, standing in the hallway, chatting with someone, some greasy-looking male student, comparing notes and phones with him as Nisei stood on the opposite side of the hallway, his hand on the doorknob of the classroom he’d been planning on entering, stopped by the sound of the voice of someone who’d once considered him a friend, no matter how much Nisei had tried to push and shove him off and no matter how many times Nisei snapped at him for stupid, inane reasons.

Either Mimuro hadn’t seen him yet, or he just didn’t care. Maybe he was happy to have gotten rid of Nisei. Maybe he’d taken joy in Nisei’s words when he’d told him that it was better if they didn’t associate with him anymore. He couldn’t tell. He was losing grasp on the feelings of others. Even now, in school, nobody was used to him being around. They all had their friends and groups and clubs, and no one spoke to him or even greeted him. He hardly even knew what the instructors were talking about anymore and in turn, the instructors barely remembered his name and said nothing to him other than the initial questioning of who he was and why he was here. Nobody spoke to him outside, either. Communication with his parents had dropped off steadily in the last few months and… there was no one else.

He’d told himself that he’d come to school today for the formality of doing so, but that wasn’t true at all. He went days without interaction, and coming here had done nothing to alleviate that, despite his real reasoning for coming to class today. People hardly acknowledged him, and he had no idea how to even approach them anymore. He was nothing more than an outsider looking in. He wasn’t even a student anymore; he was a person in the school in a uniform, watching the interactions of others and playing pretending like he understood the droning of the teachers.

Silently, Nisei reached into the bag slung over his shoulder and fished out his headphones, slipping them into his ears and hitting a button on the receiving device he had tucked away. It took a second, but soon enough, noise filled his ears, allowing him to breathe out and let his eyes slip shut, leaning against the doorway as a familiar voice surrounded him, one that he hadn’t heard directly since that day on the hill, speaking quietly and officially. He listened to it for a moment, letting himself drown in it, his mind far, far from that hill, before hitting another button, switching the feed to a more annoying one.

He opened his eyes again, only half-listening to the two men drone about paint and painting techniques, barely comprehending what they were saying. It was uninteresting, listening to these idiots, but Seimei’s orders were to monitor three households, and his least favorite two primarily, but it was  _something_ , and it covered the hole that Nisei hadn’t even realized opened up in the last few months. It was a new one, entirely different and larger than the old one, and the only thing he could do to temporarily cover it was follow orders, all in an attempt to please Seimei.

The two in his ears talked about the color of paint and Nisei started to make his way into the classroom again, and as he cast one last look behind him, at the pair that he’d been watching just a few minutes ago, he finally caught the eye of the brown-haired older student, and to his shock, a smile came over his face and he raised a hand in a wave.

Nisei let the door slam behind him and half-collapsed against a wall in the empty classroom, wondering when things had gone so wrong and when he’d lost every part of himself that he’d once thought he’d had. 

It only got worse and worse from there, until Seimei delivered the news that broke Nisei in an entirely different way.

It was at his apartment on an uncharacteristically rainy day. Seimei was inside at the door, when Nisei arrived home, and there wasn’t even a word of greeting. Seimei looked him in the eyes and somehow, it felt as though Seimei was looking down on him from a higher position, despite the fact that they were nearly the same height. It had been feeling like that a lot lately, Nisei noticed.

“I want to retrieve Soubi,” He told him, his voice solid, not allowing any sort of argument or even comment. “You’ll be coming with me. We’ll go the day after tomorrow.”

That was it. It was intended to be the end of the conversation. Seimei pushed past him, going out the door, as Nisei stood in the entryway, watching him, his eyes wide and mouth slightly agape. It couldn’t—Agatsuma was useless and yet… Seimei wanted him. Seimei chose him. And Seimei was choosing him again, over Nisei, wanting to bring him with for their looming fight with Moonless.

It was enough to force Nisei’s feet, and he found himself running after Seimei, leaving the door to his apartment wide open, his feet pounding on the puddle-covered second-floor walkway of his building, rain soaking him almost immediately as he hadn’t thought to pick his umbrella back up. The rain was pouring, drenching everything in sight, turning everything into a sickly color, the sky seeming to have opened up and poured every last drop of rain on him. The world was grey—grey and empty, until it was just the two of them here, alone.

“Seimei—!!” He shouted Seimei’s name, soaked head to toe in rainwater, his voice strained, angry, and breaking with emotion. He was seething, seeing red and yet, no thoughts or urges of violence, just raging jealousy and betrayal. Total and utter betrayal, a feeling that coursed through his violent, more intense than even the satisfaction that he’d felt after taking Mikado’s innocence.

Seimei turned and his expression was hard and unreadable. He stopped, though, just before the stairs that led to the ground floor, holding his umbrella and staring at Nisei with those violet eyes that continued to bore into him, burning holes onto his body.  It still wasn’t enough to make Nisei stop or even get him to hesitate. He halted in front of Seimei, and every feeling, every bit of loneliness and betrayal and anger that he’d felt over these last few months came bubbling up, dripping from his mouth in a collection of disgustingly putrid word-vomit.

“Am I not good enough?!” He was close to Seimei now, but he was still yelling, his voice echoing off of the empty apartment complex’s neighborhood. He breathed hard, his face and body burning, shouting as loud as he could as everything came out. “What did I do?! Agatsuma isn’t better than me! I can do so much better than him! I can be  _better_! I’ll show you. I’ll show you that I’m better than him. You don’t need him! I’m good enough. I’m good enough. I’m good enough—!!”

He barely got the last word out, breathing hard, choking on his words, and he didn’t move, not even as Seimei struck him hard across the face, the sting of it distant but still painful. And then, Seimei grabbed his face, his fingers curling over the jawbone of his chin, forcing him to look him in the eyes.

“ _You_  do not get to decide anything. I encourage you to  _learn your place_  before speaking again,” Seimei’s voice was tight and dominated, and it drowned out the pounding of the rain on the pavement and the wood of the apartment building. It was the only thing he could hear, the only thing he could feel, and the only thing in his world in that moment. He watched, as Seimei’s lips pulled upwards into a small smirk, one he was very much used to by now. “We know what happens when you make your own decisions, anyways. Poor Mikado.”

He released Nisei’s chin and Nisei found himself standing opposite Seimei, with no more energy left to fight and no more emotions left to let out. He just let his head drop, and Seimei let out a small laugh.

“Or was that you just blindly obeying like a dog? I can’t remember anymore.”

He put on a good face for the day they retrieved Agatsuma, tearing him away from that boy. Nisei stuck around behind afterwards, not wanting to have to see Agatsuma’s  _stupid_  face and the way he interacted with Seimei, and instead watched the pathetic kid, a sick satisfaction stirring inside him as he watched and listened to the kid sulk as the realization that he was almost completely alone without Agatsuma sunk in, clearly knocking the kid down from his high horse. He was able to ride that satisfaction until the battle, and until the subsequent loss on his part.

“Get out,” He hissed.

Agatsuma didn’t seem to react. He didn’t twitch or say anything or even move. For a moment, Nisei wondered if, in his haze, he was hallucinating the idiot, or if he was really here, pathetically holding a tray of food as if they  _didn’t_ despise each other enough that before this, they were completely willing to try to completely destroy each other. Agatsuma just stood there, staring at Nisei’s balled up form in the dark, almost barren room, without even so much as a window.

His entire body ached, and Agatsuma’s presence did not help in the slightest. Honestly, all he wanted was solitude. Or, at the very least, Agatsuma was the  _last_  person he wanted to interact with. But Agatsuma didn’t leave. Instead, he shut the heavy metal door behind him and approached him, setting the tray down at Nisei’s feet and crouching across from him.

“The last time you brought me food, that bastard kid of yours told me to piss myself,” He spat, still having enough of his mind left in the pain to try to insult that kid of Agatsuma’s in an attempt to piss him off enough to leave. To his despair, though, it didn’t work in the slightest, and Agatsuma barely reacted, only slightly sighing.

“This is different,” The man stared right at him, his blue eyes distant and yet, holding something within them, something familiar—an emptiness, one that Nisei knew well, and one that had opened up a hole so large inside of him that Nisei wasn’t sure if he could feel anything else anymore, or if he would ever. Agatsuma pushed the tray towards him, “Ritsuka’s not here.”

“Last time I checked, he was at home  _sobbing_. He’s probably still doing that,” If the pain was any less than it was now, Nisei may have managed a small smile, but nothing came except a grimace as his muscles tried to move too much.

Agatsuma ignored him, “Eat. If you don’t eat, it’ll feel worse.”

“Ironic advice coming from  _you_ ,” He shut his eyes hard, trying to block out the way everything throbbed and stung and somewhere, he wondered if he’d stopped bleeding and if moving around too much would reopen the deep wounds. He hissed, and then managed to speak again, “How long has it been since  _you_  ate? Seimei won’t be happy when he realizes that his  _prized Fighter_  is starving himself like a child.”

No response, and there was no spark of satisfaction that Nisei had expected. He ignored it, clenching his muscles, opening his eyes a bit again, seeing Agatsuma still crouched across from him, still and his gaze unwavering.

“Why?” Nisei asked.

“Why?” Agatsuma repeated with a genuine curiosity in his voice.

“Why did you put me to sleep during the battle?” He pressed, an urgency edging at his voice. “ _Why did you take pity on me_?”

A beat between them, filled with the deafening silence of the dark, cold room, and then Agatsuma looked away from him.

“I didn’t want you to die,” He admitted, a hard pressed frown on his face. “I felt sorry for you. Neither of us wanted to be there.”

Nisei huffed in response. He’d seen it in Agatsuma’s face that day, the way he’d looked at Nisei when Nisei had begged, had told Seimei he could do it. For a moment, he remembered, he’d actually been afraid Agatsuma was about to kill him, but his face almost looked like he  _pitied_  Nisei, with the way his blue eyes had widened and how his mouth was slightly open, and the moment that had been shared between them in that instant, before Agatsuma had put him out of his misery temporarily with a simple spell.

He let his eyes slip close again, forcing himself to relax, no longer arguing with Agatsuma’s presence.

They were both quiet for a long time. Enough so that Nisei would be worried that he hadn’t heard the other man leave if not for Agatsuma’s quiet, even breathing. He could fall asleep like this, he thought, and a spark of distant, nearly-numb amusement made the pain subside for a brief instance, but he didn’t, and the silence eventually came to an end with another unsurprising admission from the previously-hated man across from him:

“I want to die.”

This time, a small smile forced itself onto Nisei’s face, his muscles aching and stinging from the simple action of it, though he didn’t allow his eyes to open, “Join the club, asshole.”


	3. Do You Feel the Beat in Your Heart?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the morning, something changes, and something starts to mend.

And now,

And now he’s here.

Through the bars on the window, the light from early morning is starting to filter in, the darkness of the night turning into a light blue hue that slowly seeps into the room where he lays, where he’s been for god knows how long. He’s lost count of how long he’s been here, but he was never really counting in the first place. The thing is—he’s oddly fine with being here. It’s never really bothered him much, aside from the small fight he put up when he realized initially that he was being isolated and his request was being repeatedly turned down. He has no idea how long he’s been here and outside of a general curiosity, he doesn’t have any sort of desire to find out.

There’s two options. Two binary options. It’s one thing or the other, just like so many other things, and there’s no middle ground. It’s black or white—

Either he stays here for the rest of his life, isolated until he grows old or goes insane, or they kill him. It’s as simple as that, and it’s never really been hard to accept. He’d never really imagined everything ending up well, and this is how everything turned out. That was that.

His life is essentially over, anyways. He’s lost a piece of himself, a large piece, a piece that will never be recovered no matter what he does or how hard he tries. The emptiness that he’d felt all those years before meeting the man destined to be his other half—truthfully, that was nothing compared to  _this_. This is a soul-sucking hole that draws the color and life from anything and everything around him, making everything worthless, to the point where most days, Nisei doesn’t even get off the cot in the room. Most days, he stretches his arms out and stares up at the grey cement ceiling and lets the light from the window filter in and change colors with the hours and he stays up, thinking and wondering and  _remembering_ , always remembering.

Honestly, he sort of imagines that this is what Agatsuma’s stupid little kid feels like. That kid had made a huge deal out of ‘making memories’, taking photos so that he’d have something to remember events and people and things by. Often times, he finds himself wishing that he had some sort of physical evidence that those afternoons in the café had happened or that he’d once been a part of something, something that had filled him with some sort of sense of belonging, no matter how messed up and convoluted it actually was. Proof that he’d existed in some other form than this one. Something just to remember that feeling, something to assure him that it was something he actually felt at one point, rather than the soul-sucking dread and numbness he feels.

He gets up, occasionally, to retrieve meals or whatever drugs he’s being pushed. He doesn’t resist. He never really has. He has other things—books, notepads, a radio. He’s even been told that he could be allowed more privileges if he asks for them. He doesn’t, with the exception of one thing, and whenever he gives the request to whoever’s attending to him, he’s usually met with a sigh and a shake of the head. It’s the only thing he hasn’t given up on yet and even then, he doesn’t truly have any hope for it or anything else.

He’s not bored for once. He’s tired, but he can’t sleep. He can never sleep. He’s lucky when he can. If he had his way, he’d sleep all day and then hopefully wake up when he’s old and rotten or when they’re ready to execute him. He’s not  _bored_ , but he hates thinking, hates being isolated, hates the fact that it’s only him in here. Before, he’d never thought that he’d  _miss people_ , but he undeniably does and sees how this isolation could easily drive a person insane.

The sun is starting to rise. He’s learned to tell from the way the light blue light filters in. When he’d first came here, he used to spend hours standing on his bed, looking out the small window, not quite wanting to be outside but wanting to at least observe it. Now, he doesn’t bother. There’s no point in it. In the back of his mind, distantly, he wonders what day it is, but the thought is far away and he doesn’t dare to dwell on it.

There’s footsteps in the hallway, but he pays them no mind. There are other people here, he knows, even if he never hears from them, let alone sees them. The walls here are heavily soundproofed, and nothing ever gets through them, besides the sounds out in the hallway drifting in from the slit and gap in the heavy metal door. He doesn’t stir, even as they approach, expecting them to stop at a different room or quietly slide the usual plate of food through the transfer hole in the door and be on their way. It could be the doctor that visits every so often. He doesn’t care one way or another. The outcome is always the same, and he’s always left alone, isolated from everything and with only his thoughts to truly keep him company.

The footsteps don’t stop at any other door and make their way to him and it’s then that Nisei focuses on them for what he thinks will just be a fleeting moment. He notices in that instant that it’s multiple pairs of feet and that he can hear the soft, clearly distinguishable  _clicking_  of heels that the closest one wore. It’s  _that_  that draws his attention, that sound, the simple click of heels on the concrete floor, that makes him sit up in bed and draws him out of his deep, drowning trance. He pulls himself up, sitting up on the bed, his back to the barred window and eyes on the door, thinking maybe, finally—

There’s no vocal announcement of the visitors like there usually is. Instead, there’s only the turnings of the outside locks on the door and the undoing of the deadbolt that holds him in here, alone and wanting for nothing but a particular sort of company, desiring something he once had long ago.

The door opens and the yellow light streams in from the hallway, and Nisei’s eyes adjust before coming to focus on the thing that he’d been asking for since he got here, the one thing he desires here and the one thing he’s been denied over and over.

Amber eyes look down on him, a chin slightly tilted up in a position of dominance and power, perfectly manicured nails holding a file clearly labelled with his own name between thin, delicate-looking fingers. Those red lips are pursing as he’s studied, and something flickers in those amber eyes, a twinge of recognition, or remembrance.

“Akame.”

Nisei smiles, “Mikado.”


	4. Are You Afraid of Me Now?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things change, but people don't. Not really.

“Address her properly,” A guard tells him.

Nisei pays him no mind, pays no mind to the fact that she’s brought multiple burly-looking guards with her. He does pay mind to the fact that nowhere to be seen is a smiling, tired-looking auburn-haired man with the constant glimmering worry on his face and in his brown eyes. There’s only her, and she’s almost exactly how he remembers her and yet, somehow different.

They’d rematched after the initial tie between them. Moonless had won. And everything had gone downhill from there. Now he’s here, and so is she, both of them under completely different contexts, but brought back together, like a perfect circle.

She hasn’t grown an inch since those days in the café. She’s still tiny, thin, almost fragile-looking. Deceiving. There’s no change in her physical height, but she definitely looks older, though still not her age. It seems that over the past year, she’s lost most of her overt childish qualities, including the baby fat in her face and she looks overall more defined. Her face is just different enough to be noticeable, her eyes thinner and more fitting to her face, her lips a bit wider, her cheeks still full, but less so in a childlike way. Her features seem to fit together in a much better way now, even if she still looks younger than she actually is. Part of that, he knows, are the high, long pigtails sitting atop her head, pigtails that Nisei knows for a fact are fake.

She holds up a hand in response to a guard and smiles, her voice gentle and yet, not allowing for any argument, “It’s fine, Please do not scold anyone unless you are given a cue from me.”

She steps inside the concrete room and two of the guards come in with her, closing the door behind them, the heavy metal door shutting tightly as they allow it to close, sealing them inside the room with him. He makes no move, though she steps further in, looking around the room.

“Your accommodations are actually quite spacious, Akame,” She comments.

He nods, watching her closely, “I have no complaints.”

She casts a look at him, “So I’ve heard.”

The cell where he’s spent the last—he has no idea how long he’s been here—is more than enough room for him. There’s a bed, a shower and toilet, and a bench to sit on. He has blankets and pillows, all standard issue, but more than enough, and there’s untouched magazines and books on the table beside the bed, as well as an unused radio. There’s enough room for him to move around and a window, and honestly, he doesn’t want for much here.

He raises an eyebrow at her comment, “You’ve been keeping tabs on me.”

She looks at him and this time, her amber eyes stay on him. She doesn’t look stiff or uncomfortable. She’s being formal, but there’s no malice or bad intentions in her voice, and he’s always known Gomon Mikado to be the kind of girl to show her emotions when she does have them. She’s not  _angry_ , despite what he’s done to her and despite everything, he’s not entirely sure why. He welcomes it, though, and doesn’t yet point it out. She’s still smiling slightly, just enough for him to notice, “The file I have in my office for you is very thick.”

“So you didn’t forget about me,” He muses, still watching her closely, taking in her every move. The heels on the concrete floor had been hers, and she’s dressed in the same type of clothes that he remembers her liking, the solid-colored collared dress that goes most of the way down her thigh but not quite to her knee. She’s wearing a lab coat over it, and she has her official identification card displayed on her brestpocket. He stifles a laugh, “You look like that childish council member with that coat on. It’s not fitting.”

“Oh?” She presses her red-painted fingers to her lips. Pretending to be in thought. Soon enough, she glanced at one of the guards, and he came forward, taking his file from her and her lab coat as she sheds it from her arms, exposing more of her smooth, bright skin to him. She taps her fingernails on her chin afterwards, tossing her head slightly to throw her pink bangs out of her face, “Nagisa-sensei is quite beautiful. I don’t see how looking like her is an insult, Akame.”

There’s a beat between them and the small smile falls from his face as they share a long look between them while the silence of the cell swirls around them, almost deafening in the overly-formal, strangely electric air.

“Let’s stop this?”

He eases the words out of him, not quite specifying what he meant. He doesn’t have to. Even now, there’s still an understanding between them, an understanding that he’d thought they’d lost that night on the hill.

She exhales deeply, and her voice is quieter, “Yes.”

The formality falls from the room and she takes a step forward, leaning her back against the wall before sinking onto the floor, her knees in front of her. It only takes a moment for Nisei to rise from his perpetual position on the bed and follow, sinking to the ground next to her, stretching his legs out and noticing the way the guards jolted as soon as he got up and the way that even as he sits on the floor with her, their eyes are wide and their hands are poised on their belts, clearly ready to draw whatever weapon they have.

“I—” He starts out, not entirely sure what he’s going to say, but she cuts him off.

She leans her head back against the hard concrete wall, her eyes closed as she breathes out of her mouth. Beside her, her fingertips tap on the solid floor and the hair from her fake pigtails pools on the ground, the fibers of it almost touching his legs. She speaks quietly, breathing out a soft sigh, “ _I needed time_.”

“You didn’t forget about me,” He repeats, though the intention is a little different this time, even if it still holds a bit of an amused tone. It’s more sincere, more real.

“I couldn’t possibly forget, Nisei. You know that.”

“‘Nisei’?”

She turns her head towards him and opens her eyes enough that he can just barely see the color of amber peeking out from underneath her long eyelashes. She doesn’t smile, but there’s something in her voice, something that Nisei  _knows_  but has no name for, “There’s no use in pretending that we don’t know each other.”

Nisei pauses and nods. He understands. The formality between them is gone and instead, there’s something else, a familiarity that Nisei thought he’d forgotten about, something that has been gone for months and months, ever since that night on the hill when everything started spiraling out of control.

“Do you miss him?”

It’s the question that he’s been wondering since  _it_  happened. He’d already been here some time before it had happened, and he’s been stuck wondering ever since, needing to know the answer, needing to know whether or not he’s alone in the world or whether things have somehow stayed the same all this time, even when everything else has changed.

There’s another moment, and Nisei doubts it’s hesitation.

The tapping stops and instead, he can almost feel the heat radiating off of her in waves, encasing him and drowning him in a way that he’s undoubtedly missed.

“We all miss things we once had,” She says, and it’s more than enough of an answer for Nisei. She glances away, still resting her head against the concrete wall behind her, and stares up at the ceiling. The bed is now bathed in a bright blue light, bordering on white, the shadows of the bars playing out on the blankets that he has on the bed. “Even if we just miss the idea we had of them at one point.”

His next question is a logical one, and they both know it’s coming before he says it.

“Did you miss me?”

“My answer is the same,” She says, and it’s like everything else disappears from under them. The two guards standing at the door feel miles and miles away and the concrete floor drops out from underneath him, and everything feels so incredibly different that for a fleeting instance, Nisei forgets about the soul-sucking emptiness he’s felt every day since the loss of the rematch. She purses her lips, sticking them out, and then continues on when he doesn’t expect her to, “We all miss things we once had, especially things we’ve cared about.”

“Did you love him?”

“Did you?” There is no hesitation or pause between his question and hers, and Nisei is almost reminded of Seimei, who constantly answered questions with his own.

“Yes.”

She’s the first and the only person who will ever get to hear it from his own mouth, and he doubts he’ll ever utter an actual answer to that question again, even if he’s kept in this cell for the rest of his life.

“Seimei certainly had a way of making those around him fall in love with him,” She comments, her eyes sliding shut again. She breathes, in through her nose and out through her nose and Nisei turns his gaze to the plain grey ceiling, taking his time, wanting nothing more than to capture this and keep it forever. There’s an implication in her words, one that doesn’t need to be explicitly said in order to be understood and shared between the both of them.

“What about Tokino?” At this point, Nisei’s just thinking aloud, wanting to know everything, wanting to ask all the questions in his head, wanting to hear her voice answer them all until he ran out of words to say and just sat in silence with her beside him.

“I love Tokino as much as I can,” She answers, and he knows it’s truthful. After all, Mikado has always had a reputation for being incredibly truthful, for not hiding what she was feeling, and right now, there’s an even greater unspoken truth between them, something neither of them dare to cross over.

“He doesn’t understand you.”

That man never did. He didn’t understand her. He didn’t understand  _them_. There is no way he can. They understand each other. First it was the three of them and now, the two of them, sitting in the dark cell of the place Nisei had been confined to since his capture.

“You can still be soul mates with someone who doesn’t understand you,” She doesn’t even open her eyes, each word clearly carefully drawn and thought out. Mikado, while truthful, has never been one to speak without conviction, which was one of the many things that he admired about her. She takes a breath and then, “You just can never love them like someone who does understand you. Tokino and I have a very good, enjoyable relationship, but things were different before the betrayal, and I think about that a lot. The way things were between the three of us—I can never have that with Tokino, as much as he means to me.”

He doesn’t say anything, and she takes the opportunity to speak again, giving voice to his months of thoughts, “We were wrong about ourselves, Nisei. Both of us can love. Both of us feel emotions. We just do neither of those things in the way people usually understand them. We’re different, and I don’t think people like Tokino can ever quite fully understand that in the way we—I—want him to. And I think that we have to come to terms with that.”

There was truth to her words, every one of them.

“Seimei died a week ago,” She tells him.

He nods. It’s simple, really. Their bond was broken before Seimei’s actual death, he thinks, but he was still able to feel it, able to feel that last piece of himself slip away the moment the last bit of life escaped from Seimei’s eyes. Someone had told him, afterwards, a guard or a doctor, but he’d already known, and it made no difference. The emptiness is still there and he’d known the moment he was captured that this was the end, that there was nothing after this, that  he’d lost everything. And he was right. It was only a matter of time before Seimei would be executed, and sure enough, he had been.

“I know,” He says, and it doesn’t change anything because Seimei was dead the moment everything fell through. “You executed him.”

He says it without judgement. It’s a fact and nothing more. Mikado has always been the person who would hold Seimei’s fate in their hands if he were to be captured like he had been. She holds Nisei’s own fate in her hands, too, and the decision of whether to kill him or let him grow old in this prison cell is hers.

“I did.”

“If you executed him for his crimes against you, then you should execute me as well.”

There’s no emotion or wavering in his voice. It’s only fair, he thinks, that they suffer the same punishment for the same crimes. That’s the way things work, and Mikado is the executioner and metric by which this world is judged. She has power, and a lot of it. It’s hard to remember, sometimes, that she isn’t just the girl who he’d spent countless afternoons with, sitting in that corner table in the café, talking about inane things and buying her parfaits. She’s important, one of the most important people in this world, important enough that there’s no one above her to judge her actions. She’s a fair person, but she’s at the top, superior to everyone and with enough power to bring down anyone she likes, including Beloved, who very nearly succeeded at bringing down the council. If she makes a decision on his fate, there’s no one to judge her for it. It’s her decision and her decision alone.

She looks at him again, amber eyes fixed on him, and they lock gazes as she presses her red lips together in thought. The words ease out of her, slow and full of that same  _something_  that Nisei knows well, but can’t name, “I can’t kill you, Nisei. I won’t. It’s more complicated than that. Do you really think I can judge you on the same metric that I judged Seimei? Do you think any of us can draw the line between you and Seimei? Can  _you_  even draw that line?”

“No,” It’s something he’s thought about for months, alone in this cell, and the only answer he’s come up with is that he  _can’t_  draw that line. Nobody can draw that line. Seimei could’ve, maybe, but Seimei was an entirely separate being, something inhuman and something that carried secrets with him until the day he died at this girl’s hands. He doesn’t drop her gaze, “I have no idea if what we did—what I did—was his fault or mine. I can’t figure out an answer. Maybe there  _is_ no answer.”

“Yes,” She touches her full lips again. “Maybe.”

“Aren’t you afraid of me?” He presses, his voice growing a bit in volume. “I could do the exact same thing again. You have no idea. Aren’t you afraid of what could happen? Aren’t you afraid that it wasn’t Seimei underneath it all?”

“Hands off!”

The voice brings him back down to earth abruptly, crashing back into the cell that he’s spent the last few months in. He startles, and looks towards the door, where one of the guards is gripping a drawn gun, pointed directly at his head. No fear courses through him, even as the same guard repeats the command, prompting Nisei to look down, finding that he’s leaned in and has captured a piece of flyaway natural hair next to Mikado’s face.

Mikado raises a hand, looking away from him and fixing her gaze on her guard.

“Stand down. Now.”

In response to her commanding, demanding voice, the guard steps back and tucks the weapon back into his belt. He can feel the anxiety coming off of the man, the fear that’s absolutely absent from the girl sitting next to him.

She placed her hand back on the concrete floor, close, but not quite touching, to his thigh.

She leans in, to where he can almost,  _almost_  feel Mikado’s breath on his skin, but not quite, “I’m not afraid, Nisei. It won’t happen. Things have changed. I know better now and you—there’s nothing left for you now, is there? Things have changed.”

She rises to her feet, brushing herself off, and Nisei stays on the concrete floor, looking up at her. Her amber eyes fix on him, the yellow hue of them filling him with  _something_ , something he thought he’d forgotten a long time ago. It’s easy to forget feelings, he thinks, when one stops feeling them and when they can no longer recall what it was even like to feel that emotion. She doesn’t glare at him and her eyes don’t burn holes straight through him like Seimei’s once had. Instead, their shared look is evidence of something else between them, a connection that was once broken, a connection that’s recovering from being severed.

“And yet—” She says, looking down at him. “We stay the same, don’t we?”

“Why aren’t you going to kill me?” He presses again, wanting, needing to know the answer, needing to hear those words from her lips.

“I don’t want to. I can’t,” She speaks truthfully, just as he’s known her to since he met her. “You and I—we’re both deeply flawed people. We may have been wrong about Seimei and ourselves, but we weren’t wrong about each other, were we? We’re alike, and you and I both miss something we once had. You and I are both holding onto the pieces of that thing, whether it’s Seimei or whatever we had between the three of us, or even a life before all this. The truth is that I don’t want to let go of the only piece of that thing I have left. There’s a reason we keep circling back to each other. There’s a reason we keep coming back. There’s a reason, and that’s all I need.”

She turns, and Nisei immediately lunges to stop her, not daring to grab at her, a single word falling from his lips, urgent and needing, reminding him of the day he’d chased after Seimei in the rain, “Wait—!”

She stops at the heavy metal door, her guards parting to let her to it. She looks back at him, over her shoulder, her pink hair falling around her face and the strands from the pigtails draping over her shoulders, her eyes slightly hooded and a small smile tugging at her lips, “I’ll be back. I said I needed time, and I took it. Be patient, Nisei.”

And then, she leaves, and he watches her go, watches as her heels click away from him and watching as her guards fasten the door again, listening as the locks and deadbolt slide into place. He’s alone again, then, sitting in his cell alone, with the blue morning light filtering in and casting shadows onto his bed. He sits against the wall, drawing his knees up towards his chest and lets his head hang, his black hair draping down his face, concealing his expression. He’s alone again. Completely alone.

It doesn’t take long. He begins counting the days by each morning and sunset. He doesn’t get far, though, because at the dawn of the third day, he awakens from a rare sleep to the sound of heels on the concrete floor. It’s one set of feet this time, and from the sounds of it, nobody’s even following her. The light is mirroring the first day she came in, light blue and bright, only obstructed by the bars on the window. It starts just like any other morning, with Nisei laying on his bed, this time in a fitful, rare sleep. He sits up before the sound of her feet stops, and he wonders if this is what the rest of his years are going to be like, counting the days until she comes, listening, always listening for the sound of her high heels on the floor of the building, isolated except for her occasional presence. He thinks maybe he’s alright with that, maybe he can live like that, and maybe that anticipation will keep him from going insane in his cell.

It never quite works out the way he thinks, though, and sometimes, he doesn’t quite know exactly what he wants. No—most of the time he doesn’t know what he wants.

He listens as the locks are undone and as the deadbolt is slid out of place. There’s a pause, and then the door opens and the yellow, blinding artificial light from the hallway outside blinds him until all he can see is her, standing in a white dress, her usual wig nowhere in sight, her natural hair still cropped and short, just like it was the day he’d held it in his fist and cut most of it off. She looks different, so, so different without it. There’s no more long, pink hair hanging around her face or from the highly tied pigtails, nothing to frame her face and make her look more childlike than she really is. Her attire helps, too, her white dress flowing and shorter than the dresses she normally wears, the white shoes on her feet being a much more mature-looking pair with tall, thin heels that boosts her height just enough that she looked  _older_. It’s now, like this, that he sees how much she’s changed in the past year or so. Her face is even more defined that he’d thought three days ago, and her body actually looks like that of a  _teenager_ , rather than that of a  _child_.

He stares at her, because there’s nothing else he can do. She stands in the light, dressed in white, and it’s the first time he’s seen her without the wig since that night on the hill. He thinks, for a second, that maybe he’s dreaming or hallucinating, but there’s a feeling of this being so utterly  _real_  that he finds it actually impossible to consider that an actual option.

She turns her head at him, studying him before speaking in the cold, silent air.

“Are you coming?”

“What—?” His voice is every bit as confused as he is, and for the life of him, he can’t figure out why Gomon Mikado is here, standing in his doorway in a formal white dress and showing her real hair, asking him, a prisoner of the  _government organization_  to come with her. Nothing adds up, and Nisei has no idea what to do or how to react and he cannot figure out what is going on or even what’s going through her head, for once.

She smiles, and it’s something soft, instead of the slight smirks and grins that had been shared between them before. It’s soft and quiet and so oddly  _genuine_  that Nisei is a little taken aback. There’s something about her, the way she’s carrying herself, as if she’s both happy and missing something dearly. Those feelings show in her eyes and on her face, and Nisei thinks that maybe this is what people call  _bittersweet_.

“Aren’t you going to accompany to the funeral, Nisei?” She asks, and then softly  _tsk_ s, though it’s playful and there’s more bittersweetness hidden beneath it. “I certainly can’t go alone, and I already went through the trouble of having you a suit tailored.”

Silence.

He understands now. She doesn’t need to say anything more. He rises from his bed and stands opposite her, his feet bare and dressed in the scrub-like clothes that he’s constantly given to wear here. He doesn’t know how long it’s been since he was outside, nor does he know how long it’s been since he’s worn real clothes, but he doesn’t hesitate.

“Alright; Let’s go.”             

She beckons him closer and he follows.


	5. Run Away With Me Now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He didn't go to Seimei's previous funeral, but he can't imagine that it was anything like this one.

The organ resounds throughout the entire chapel and it shakes the floor beneath Nisei’s feet, like an earthquake. He’s glad they arrived late; Nisei has hardly seen anyone in  _months_  aside from the people assigned to care and tend to him, and he resents the idea of seeing so many unwanted people now.

Seimei was never a religious person.

He thinks it’s fitting, though, to have his funeral in such a grand place. He hadn’t gone to Seimei’s original funeral, since he’d known of Seimei’s plans, but to his understanding, it was completely different from this one. Held at a shrine, full of crying people and family, all speaking wonderful things about him, and actually rather small. They had all been there to mourn him. This—is something completely different from that.

In the room in front of him the pews are all-but packed with people, leaving little room for more people. He recognizes some of them, mostly towards the front—obnoxious blue pigtails denoting Septimal Moon’s head of the sciences, next to her being Minami Ritsu, a man who Seimei had irreversibly disabled; then ahead of them is a familiar set of dark hair and virgin ears and next to him, a tall man who looks emotionally broken even from the back, with his bent head and stiff shoulders. There’s a lot of other people, people Nisei’s met and people he hasn’t. He recognizes some of them as teams and parts of units that he’d helped commit crimes against. There’s a green-haired man sitting next to Agatsuma that Nisei recognizes as the idiot’s equally stupid painting friend. None of the other Aoyagis are here, or at least—none that Nisei can recognize. Neither the Aoyagi mother nor father are anywhere to be seen.

It’s a sea of black, only broken up by the differing skin and hair colors of each person, only seen from the black. Below the neck, the congregation is a solid mass of black. Not one person who sat on the pews had dared to wear anything else, either out of tradition or fear of disrespect. Most notably, though, the congregation is oddly silent. There are hushed conversations here and there, but most look straight ahead with hard expressions, and there is nobody to be seen or heard who seem to actually be crying from grief. The sense of mourning is completely absent in the church, and there’s no sense of grief hanging off of the people before him. Something else settles over them, a feeling much like the one that he’d seen on Mikado in the doorway just hours before.

The chapel itself is unlike anything he’s ever seen or been in. It’s ornate, golden, and  _colorful_. The organ is huge, lining the walls with its pipes, each key press causing a multitude of vibrations underneath Nisei’s feet, shaking him to the core. They’re outside the actual chapel itself, looking in from the entry hall. Before them is an aisle lined with red and gold carpet and flanked by sets of pews on either side sprawls up, leading up to a wooden platform spanning the entire back of the room. It’s on that platform that the altar, podium, organ and—above all—the closed casket are, the casket itself decorated with red and gold and surrounded with bouquets of flowers and lit candles. The lights aren’t on in the chapel, the only illumination coming from the massive stained glass display above the altar and raised platform, causing a rainbow of colors to play out on the floor and across the members of the congregation.

It’s a sight to see, and they had arrived after everyone had taken their seats, after they were all settled. He stands in the open entryway, looking in, watching and looking at everything from the decorations on the casket to the actions and reactions of the members of the congregation. Across from him, Mikado stands, dressed in white, her arms crossed and a foot up against the frame of the entryway as she leans against the ornate wood. She watches, too, her face pressed into the same sentimental expression that he’d seen before.

This is the end, he knows. It all wound up here.

As the organ blares on and Mikado begins tapping her gold-painted nails against her arm, he remembers the day this all truly started, the day the man in the casket walked into his life.

He hadn’t known that day. There was no way he could’ve known. It seemed like coincidence at the time, that the student he’d lent an eraser to had struck up a conversation in a way that drew Nisei in instantly. Honestly, he hadn’t even thought much of it at the time, chalking it up to nothing and thinking that he’d probably just found another Mimuro. It occurs to him now that Seimei had planned and calculated every bit of that, had planned exactly how Nisei would react and feel, because Seimei had  _understood_ , even if he wasn’t human at all and had used that knowledge to destroy him.

 _We’re both deeply flawed people_ , Mikado had told him three days ago. He can’t agree more. As he stands in the entryway, watching as a priest make his way from the side of the platform towards the podium, he is what’s left of the destruction that had affected every single person in this room, and still others more. He’s the product of it, part of it, the end result of something purposefully and willingly breaking down a person until all that was left of it was the fragments of a person, of  _something_  that Nisei assigns his given name to. He is broken, fragmented, and he has been since their defeat at the rematch, and maybe even longer. Maybe he broke that day that he failed against Moonless the first time. He doesn’t know and at this point, there’s no benefit in trying to find out.

The priest adjusts the microphone and begins speaking, his voice deep and echoing throughout the large chapel. He greets the congregation formally, but Nisei tones him out, the man’s words becoming a droning background.

He tilts his head towards the girl opposite him, but doesn’t look at her as he speaks, “Why didn’t you have Tokino escort you?”

She hums, just barely audible over the buzz of the priest speaking and the quiet piano music playing underneath his words, “We never truly change, Nisei. We never will. I think you and I may be the only ones who have anything even close to an understanding of Seimei, even if we were always wrong about him. I… Tokino is bothersome. Worrisome. I wanted to be with someone who understood, someone who wouldn’t pity me or fuss over me. I wanted to circle back again, just like we did so many times before.”

Nisei nods, and he does understand. He can’t imagine that Tokino would do well here, with his anger at Seimei and his anger at Nisei, as well. He imagines that the ceremony going on now would be very different if the chronic narcoleptic were here. For one, Nisei wouldn’t be here, and right now, he only wants to be here, nowhere else, not even wanting to go back to a time in the past.

It’s Mikado who speaks up again, and Nisei listens, even if he doesn’t look at her, “I let Tokino help me with the execution. It was his right. But… I still didn’t want him at the funeral with me. Tokino means a lot to me, but there’s some things he and I just can’t share.”

The priest finishes and steps off the stage and for a moment, Nisei wonders if it’s over, if the priest’s general, unfeeling speech is the end. He’s immediately proven wrong, though, as the congregation falls silent. The child in the front stands, then, small, perhaps even smaller than Mikado, and still with black virgin ears atop his head. He nudges the person beside him, but the blonde man doesn’t get up. The boy gives up quickly and climbs the few steps onto the platform, making his way behind the speaking podium, clearly having to step up onto something to even reach the microphone.

“Aoyagi Seimei—” The boy begins, his voice exactly how Nisei remembers it. It’s like he hasn’t grown at all since the rematch, when he’d interrupted and brought others with him. “—was my brother. Seimei was everything to me, and Seimei was everything to a lot of people. In the end, it turned out that Seimei wasn’t who I thought he was, and for a long time, I tried to decide whether or not that made my good memories of him fake or real.”

Nisei laughs under his breath and looks to his side, seeing a slight smile tugging at Mikado’s lips. The kid is very obviously reading off of something he’s written for this occasion. It may be heartwarming and touching to the members filling the pews, but to Nisei, it sounded so… empty. The kid doesn’t know his brother at all, even post mortem and even after learning about all the transgressions Beloved had committed.  It’s typical—Aoyagi Ritsuka still seems to view the world partially in binary terms, and he’s still struggling with that.

“Recently, I decided that the memories I have of him, and that others may have of him, are not fake. The fact that Seimei did… horrible things doesn’t negate the fact that we all do share some good memories with him. The good memories probably don’t outweigh the bad and… the good memories don’t excuse the things he did or the way he hurt people. My brother wasn’t a good person, but it hurts more to hold onto those terrible memories of him. In the past few weeks, I’ve read a lot on letting go, and it’s important that we remember and hold onto those good memories and try to process the bad ones and then, eventually, let go of them. Someday, we’ll all recover from this and someday, we may be able to celebrate Seimei’s life, the parts of him that didn’t want to hurt people. We shouldn’t forgive and forget, but we also shouldn’t pass over and dismiss the bad memories we all share of Seimei. I know I’ll never be able to forget about the brother I once had, and I’ve come to the realization that I don’t want to. He was a person, too, though, and I don’t think we should forget about that.”

The kid bows his head, his skin red and his eyes holding back obvious tears, and there’s a quiet, subdued applause from the congregation. The boy steps down and walks off-stage, and it’s when he’s climbing down the steps that Mikado nudges him.

He meets her eyes.

“Come with me,” She says.

“Okay.”

She steps inside the chapel, the heel of her shoe creating a very audible noise against the tile of the floor in the silence that’s fallen over the congregation. People turn and everything goes completely quiet. The organ stops playing and it’s almost as if everyone holds their breaths. Eyes are on them and she doesn’t stop, keeping her eyes locked forward as she starts making her way down the long aisle.

He looks, though, and he sees the shocked faces of strangers and people he once associated with, people who he lost long ago, either through a violent betrayal or a drifting apart. Many of them he doesn’t know, but they all stare at them, at  _her_ , as they make their way through the chapel.

He follows her, just as he promised he would, trailing behind her, every step as confident as hers is. Her dress flows behind her, a bit longer in the back, a stark white against the sea of black in the congregation and against the royal colors of the chapel. When he looks back at her, he sees the way the white fabric exposes her back, where  _Moonless_  is written elegantly across her shoulder blades. No draping pigtails cover her back or her shoulders, and he knows without being told that just like with him, this is the first time many of them have ever seen her without her wig on.

She walks confidently, her gaze never straying from the casket ahead of them in the center of the platform. She doesn’t look away, not even as they get to the front of the congregation. He recognizes these faces now, and every one in the congregation has fallen into a hushed silence and every eye is on them.

The remaining members of Septimal Moon sit in the first few rows of the pews. The older woman, Nagisa, leans over and hisses a, “Mikado-chan  _stop_.” At her, but she pays no mind, and the middle-aged woman shuts up the second Nisei looks at her.

Her heels click on the tile as the carpet ends and she climbs the first step. He doesn’t, taking a step off to the side, watching her and then turning his eyes to the people in first row. The boy looks away from him, staring with his mouth open at Mikado, but he catches the blue eyes of Agatsuma, and sees him, sees the eye injury he was left with, sees the bandages on his head, sees the way that his eyes at almost completely  _dead_ , as if a part of him had died with the man in the casket, too. Agatsuma drops his gaze and stares at the floor, looking absolutely powerless and vulnerable, and Nisei can feel the hatred pounding off of those in the first few rows who know him.

He doesn’t care. Not really.

She doesn’t go behind the podium, and he knows that was never really her intention. Instead, she goes to the casket, and places a thin, smooth hand on it, not lingering as she turns to the congregation. She doesn’t make any move for the microphone, and soon enough, it becomes clear that she has no need for it.

“I’m sure it’s not necessary to introduce myself,” She’s not shouting but somehow, her voice fills the room and echoes off the walls, loud and clear and  _solid_. Her amber eyes are lit, burning in a way that he’d only seen before during the executions he’d watched. She doesn’t pause, doesn’t hesitate, and it immediately becomes evident to him that she has no intentions of being kind, “Many of you know me as the council member who ruled Aoyagi Seimei to be killed, and many of you know that I’m the one who carried out the physical execution. Some of you also know that it was against me that some of the crimes were committed and that the only reason Seimei began to be prosecuted was because the council could not ignore the crimes against one of their own.

“Contrary to what you may hear today about holding onto good memories, Aoyagi Seimei was a piece of shit. Those of you who have good memories with him were undoubtedly manipulated and played like a puppet in the entire duration of your relationship. Every one of you was a pawn in his game and none of you meant anything more to him than that. When I carried out Seimei’s execution, I delivered each and every blow with a sense of satisfaction and none of you can tell me that you would’ve felt anything different. You cannot act as if Seimei was someone who deserved love or argue that he was someone who deserved to be remembered fondly, because he used every one of you and then threw you away and betrayed you in the most hurtful way possible when he was done with you.

“Physically, Seimei was not a powerful man, but I knew Seimei better than any one of you here did, and after everything, I saw Seimei for what he was. Seimei was not human. He never was. He was something entirely different. Seimei was a terrible thing that used every single person around him like a puppet. Nobody was truly special to Seimei, no matter what he told you, and none of you meant one bit more to him than the person next to you. Seimei claimed that he cared for one person but even then, he hurt that person enough that that person is still trying to find redeemable qualities about him just so he can allow himself to hang onto the good memories he had of his brother.”

The green haired man beside Agatsuma stands, his hands balling into fists, but Nisei is quicker, and he grabs the man’s arm before he can get anywhere or say anything. He digs his nails into him through the black jacket the man wears, and the man grits his teeth, but does nothing more, ripping away from Nisei and sitting back down.

“Don’t make the mistake of trying to humanize or sympathize with Seimei. There’s nothing to sympathize with. Truly, Seimei didn’t love anyone. He treated his feelings of obsession as love, and he was wrong. Towards the end, I pitied Seimei. I felt sorry for him. I made that mistake and I encourage all of you to never do the same. Your positive memories of him, if you even truly have them, are filled with the ways he was using and manipulating everyone around him. Look at yourselves. Even now, you’re all trying to think of how this person you once knew could do this.

“The truth is that none of us actually knew Seimei. Even I didn’t truly know Seimei, but what I did know was more than others. I tried for months after he tried to take everything from me to find a reason. A reason that he did all this, a reason that he wanted to destroy everything around him, even a reason that he’d done this to  _me_. And then I realized something.

“There is no reason. There’s no reason for the things he did to me, and there’s no reason for the things that he did to any of you. Seimei wasn’t human. Seimei didn’t need a reason. He just  _was_. He just  _did_. Somewhere, he lost whatever goals he appeared to have and burned every bridge he possibly could for no reason. There’s no grand, for the better reason that he caused all of the hurt to everyone in this room. Essentially, you suffered for nothing. Seimei never thought he was right, nor did he ever think he was good. Seimei was the incarnate of evil, and he hurt every person in this room and too many others to count, and I know without a doubt that even if you’re not like me, all of you at some point tried to find a reason why, and yet, none of you could find one that completely fit. There is none. There is no reason, and that’s what made Seimei so completely different from every person in this room.

“Seimei was a piece of shit and I’m glad he’s dead. So are all of you, truthfully. Some of you may claim that you miss him, but you don’t miss the thing he actually was. You miss the face he put on for you, the thing you once thought you had, and you miss the idea of him you have in your head. If it came to it, none of you would dare to bring him in his full form back to life, and if you do, then you’re an idiot and too attached to this idolized idea that you have of Seimei in your head.”

She pauses for a moment, and Nisei hangs onto every word. The congregation is still completely silent. On the platform, Mikado looks back at the casket and draws her bottom lip between her teeth for just a second, and then continues, not allowing any sort of emotion to break into her voice.

“Seimei was a piece of shit and he should not be remembered in any positive, good manner, no matter how much any of you want to believe that he was a good person. I, for one, will be nothing but relieved when I see this bastard put in the ground for good. I can only hope that if there’s a hell, he’s burning alive in it.”

There are no claps that follow her last words, and she steps off of the stage. He meets her at the bottom step and they lock eyes, just as they did before she walked down the aisle. Wordlessly and almost thoughtlessly, he offers an arm to her. She takes it, wrapping her thin hand around his elbow, and she leads the way down the aisle again, until they’re far, far away from the chapel and alone.

“We’re finally right about him,” Is the only thing he says.

She simply nods in agreement and the two of them sit in silence against the brick wall, waiting, waiting, waiting, an unlikely pair, the girl who Nisei had once torn apart on a hill as twilight fell and Nisei himself, who would never know where he ended and Seimei began.

 

The procession begins hours and hours later, when the sky is being painted with reds and pinks and oranges. It takes a while to get to the burial site, and he spends most of the time gazing out the window with his chin resting on his hand, watching as they drove to a rural part of the country, to where Seimei’s kid brother had picked out for a burial site. At some point in the journey, the buildings turned into houses and then turned into trees, green and mostly pine lining the road and clustering in scattered forests. The sun is just starting to dip below the horizon over the water under the cliffs when they arrive at the small cemetery.

He recognizes everyone in the procession, and it’s much smaller than the congregation had been. The remaining members of the Septimal Moon council, Agatsuma, Seimei’s kid brother, Agatsuma’s friend—and no one else. No other family or friends. Just them and he and Mikado.

The walk is wordless and the nature of the world buzzes around them, birds singing in the distance and crickets chirping in trees and in the grass. In the accompanying small church, bells ring, signifying the beginning of another hour. Just beyond the gates of the cemetery are the cliffs and the crashing waves of the ocean below.

They walk in a scattered line, and Nisei walks beside Mikado, behind Agatsuma and the kid, Nagisa, the shut-in girl, and the blind Minami Ritsu trailing behind them. Agatsuma’s painter friend brings up the rear, a priest leading them all to the gravesite, where the casket already is and a hole is already dug. The walk takes almost no time at all, and they arrive quickly.

There’s a few words said, but Nisei doesn’t quite catch them. Mikado’s words are still ringing in his head, even as she stands beside him, still barely even coming up to his upper chest with her heels on. He looks at her throughout the short speech, and she stays focused on the man’s talking, and together, they all watch as the casket is lowered into the ground. He watches, trying to convince himself that this is the end, that although Seimei had seemingly had all the power in the world, he doesn’t have the ability to rise from the dead and continue to wreak havoc. He’s dead, he realizes, and he’s never coming back, and there’s a hole in his heart as he watches the first bit of dirt thrown onto the casket. Soon enough, he knows, Seimei will be buried in the ground, never to be seen or heard from again.

It’s undeniably hard to ever imagine a life without Seimei.

People begin leaving as the hole starts to fill up and Aoyagi Ritsuka is sobbing noisily while Agatsuma stands, motionless and expressionless beside him. Eventually, Mikado nudges him and motions towards the cliffs just outside of the cemetery’s fence. They leave quietly, Nisei giving one last look behind him as they did, one last look at the man who’d simultaneously made him and destroyed him, and then, he left.

 

The cliffs face the east, where the sun starts to dip below the horizon, the smudged colors of the sky being reflected onto the calm water below. The sky has a few clouds in it, and he can see more dark ones in the distance. The sun is a glowing ball of orange and yellow, burning bright and threatening to disappear below the reaches of the water.

He stands on the cliff, the wind from the seaside blowing at him, causing the loose tie around his neck and his hair to blow behind him. Mikado stands beside him again, the wind tugging at the white dress, blowing the fabric back from her legs, the white billowing in the wind. Together, they stare at the setting sun, at the calm waters of the ocean, at the town in the distance, and the world is both full of noise and quiet. In his head is Seimei’s voice mixed with Mikado’s eulogy, the two of them combining into one, and Nisei lets it, unable to stop it or his thoughts, feeling a strange feeling of longing envelop him. A longing for the past, a longing for the future, a longing for something that once was and the idea he holds of someone, even now.

“Aoyagi Ritsuka turned down a position at the Septimal Moon council,” Mikado says, without looking at him. Her voice is soft and quiet, almost gentle, the opposite of what it was during her speech. “He told the council that he wants to wait until he reaches adulthood to take the position.”

“Are you going to wait that long?” He murmurs, never having been too caught up in the dealings of the council, but finding some sort of distant, foreign solace in making conversation.

“There’s no other choice,” The sun is dipping lower and lower and along with it, the sky grows darker and the clouds in the distance loom closer. “Agatsuma Soubi attempted suicide days before the funeral. Obviously, he didn’t succeed. Nagisa-sensei and Minami Ritsu are hardly speaking due to Nagisa finding out the truth about her sister. We lost both Chouma and Kuunagi.”

“Sounds like you don’t have much of a council anymore,” He comments.

“No,” She tells him, and then there’s a hand on his arm, pulling harshly at his sleeve. “Nisei.”

It’s not a question, but a demand, and he obeys automatically, turning towards the much smaller girl, looking down at her as she fixes him with a stare.

“Do you have anything sentimental in that prison cell?”

It takes no thought, “No.”

“Good,” She looks back at the sun setting over the ocean. “I’d like it if you stayed. With me.”

Maybe there had been a middle ground all along. A middle ground between a death sentence and a fate of spending the rest of his years until death locked in a concrete cell. Maybe there had been a third option all along, something that he hasn’t seen until now.

She continues on, “You’ll be subservient to us and Tokino will most likely take his anger out on you for the first few weeks, but eventually, we’ll start something anew. We’ll try again. It’ll be different from Seimei. You’ll mean something to us. To me. We’ll start over.”

The sun finally fully dips below the horizon, setting on the cemetery and the newly buried casket containing the man that Nisei had thought of as more powerful than a god. He’s gone now, and twilight settles around them, bathing everything in new darkness. He knows that in the morning, the sun will rise again and a day will start anew, all over. One thing closed and soon enough, another opens.

He looks back at her, back at her amber eyes and realizes that yes, there always was a third option. Always.

He utters a single word, and vows to never regret it, “Okay.”

* * *

 

 

Now the waves they drag you down

Carry you to broken ground

Though I'll find you in the sand

Wipe you clean with dirty hands

So god damn this boiling space

The Spanish Sahara

The place that you'd wanna

Leave the horror here

 

Forget the horror here

Forget the horror here

Leave it all down here

It's future rust and it's future dust

_—Spanish Sahara, Foals_

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading this far! 
> 
> This was written for my friend over a course of three days. I sent it to her and then I edited it on the fourth day. Feedback is completely welcomed!
> 
>  
> 
> [Here's my tumblr if you want to check out my Loveless theories and analyses.](http://lovelesswiki.tumblr.com/)


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